The Seond Offensive Redux
by Red Leader
Summary: The Milky Way Galaxy quarantine has been lifted and the only long lost brothers of Earth can save the galaxy from the Breen's new weapon turning the galaxy into the dark ages.
1. Prologue

Title: The Second Offensive

Authors: Texan and Redleader

Ratings: R

Disclaimer: stargate series don't belong to us, nor do any recognizeable characters from that show. Star Trek series don't belong to us, nor do any recognizable characters from the show.

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Prologue

Breen Homeworld

50 years ago

It was a small scout ship that found the vessel, crashed onto an asteroid in a remote part of the space that the Breen claimed as their own. Well, perhaps not so much a ship as it was the remnants of one. Except for the fact that it was a hunk of refined metal of a type the Breen had never seen before, there was nothing to mark it as a space going vessel. A message was passed up the chain of command, regarding the find, and soon enough there were all manner of other ships in the area, searching, seeking out, and generally just making nuisances of themselves, attempting to determine if the vessel had been the precursor of a failed invasion.

But they found no other ships, no survivors, and absolutely nothing to indicate how the ship had gotten there or where it had come from. There was no overall shape or form to the vessel, just that it was obviously not a naturally occurring piece of the asteroid. They brought an exploration ship into the sector, and beamed the hunk of ship, and the asteroid that surrounded it into a work area aboard the ship, where their scientists and engineers were eager to get their hands on this new discovery.

It took them ten years to realize several things. First, the metal used was not one that was naturally occurring in any of the systems under their control. It wasn't an artificially created metal either. Secondly, what they had was only a small portion of a ship; the nose part of the bow of an immense vessel. Thirdly, and more importantly, the section they did have housed a weapon of immense power. A weapon so powerful as to dwarf anything in existence, even the Borg of the Delta Quadrant. Fourth, while the find of the weapon was important, the lack of any suitable power source for said weapon was also of importance. It meant that the Breen would have to either develop a power source just to feed this weapon, or take the risk that the weapon would completely drain the systems of a ship during combat. The last important find was a part of a database. A sort of Captain's Log, they guessed. What little they understood was that the part of the vessel they'd found had been damaged in a battle with an enemy referred to only as the Tau. The ship had attempted to limp home, and it's shields had failed at the most inopportune of moments, during an encounter with an expanding wave front of energy from a nearby supernova. The failure of the shields had resulted in the death of all crew aboard the vessel. The failure of the shields had also resulted in the destabilization of the engine core, the result of which was a series of explosions that devastated the vessel, and flung this one piece to its inevitable encounter with an asteroid.

It took then another ten years, and numerous scouting missions to locate a source for the metal in question, along with another five years to learn all of the properties of said metal. It was soft and malleable by hand when in its raw state. After refinement, it was nearly impervious to weapons fire, dissipating the vast majority of energy directed at it. Encased by a shield, it would protect those within, as its melting point was higher than any weapon, save a Type XII or better Starfleet or equivalent phaser. Another fifteen years to build a Breen version of the Ri cannon. Ri was the name taken from the databank and it was not known whether Ri was a name, or just part of a name. Yet it was easily pronounced, and the name stuck with little thought to whether it was correct. The first test of the weapon, completely immolated the small cruiser the weapon pod was attached to, but gave the Breen science teams untold terraquads of data from which too improve their designs.

After eight years of testing, the result was the creation of the Breen Ri Cannon. When mounted in arrays, like the Federation phasers, the generators could direct energy to any point along the array and channel the entire burst to one point in space, or to multiple points in space, without losing any power . The Breen were ready. They wanted revenge. Against the Federation for the outcome of the war. Against the Cardassians for their betrayal. Against the Dominion for the results of the war. Against the Klingons for daring to send an invasion force to their space. Against everyone else, just the simple need to fight.

The weapon was powerful. Immensely powerful. But it was also immensely, well, immense. Because of the size and power requirements the only ship it would conceivably fit, would be a new class of warship, the Ri class, built around their newest weapon. With thirty arrays, covering every conceivable angle of the ship, and two forward facing cannons, the Ri class would do what no other ship could do; bring every world in the galaxy the command of the Breen Confederacy. The Dominion and Cardassia first. Then the Romulans and the Klingons. And by the time they went for the Federation, there would be none strong enough left to assist them.


	2. Chapter 1

A/N I made a minor change in cahpter 1, A reviewer pointed out that it would be unlike the military to ignore the civilians. And that Federation history showed only six hundred million dead, right? When I went back and re-read what I had written, I realized a had a couple of run on sentences in the dialogue that completely changed my original intent of that initial reaction, making Jack and Landry and the NORAD general Bart look like heartless bastards. The intent was to make Woolsey look like that, not the military characters. By adding a couple of periods and a couple minor changes to the flow, things now look better for the military, and really bad for the IOA.

Chapter 1

Pegasus Galaxy

Lantean System

Lantea 2

Thorstown City

The city known as Thorstown had been established in those heady days after the Wraith had finally been exterminated, and the Iratus bug removed from existence. The Tau'ri had honored their long fallen allies, the Asgard, by naming various cities in the Pegasus Galaxy after them. Thorstown. Freyrville. Even Loki had a system named for him. It. Whatever.

Peace had settled on to the Pegasus Galaxy with the demise of the Wraith, and those planets that had lived in fear rejoiced in new-found peace. Governments that had been at odds with the Wraith found new leases on life, and with the assistance from the City of the Ancestors, and the Tau'ri living within the city, many found the right incentives to expand. The Genii opened peaceful contact with the worlds that had once been a part of their confederation and found many willing to re-join for the sake of their memories. Some of their worlds had been completely culled, with no survivors found, and onto these worlds, bold and daring Genii made the transit to start over.

There would never be a Sateda again, but Ronon Dex, with the help of Sheppard and others of the Lantean citadel, had found many of the survivors. Again, the help from Lantea, he and the other survivors, were attempting to rebuild what they had lost. Sateda would be recorded in their history books, and Weir's World joined the alliance of systems that was forming in Pegasus. With the influx of the surviving Free Jaffa led by Teal'c, who found much honor in the plight of Ronon Dex, the planet named for the Lantea Expeditionary leader who had been among the first to trust Ronon, became a strong one in short order. The people of Weir's World would also be Satedans, but they honored Dex when he chose the name, and their cities grew great and strong, built on the ashes of the dead and destroyed. Their infantry fighters were well known in the Lantean Alliance, and their Specialist units became the most sought after for everything from peacekeeping duty to exploration.

Asura was no more. It had been destroyed utterly by the FRAN replicator, when the mass of nanites it drew into itself reached critical mass, and the planet collapsed in on itself. As McKay and Ronon Dex were in the power room, attempting to steal the critical ZPMs that Atlantis needed, McKay's laptop was downloading as much of the Asuran database as he could. It wouldn't be until later, after the explosion that destroyed the planet, that McKay would have a chance to review the stolen data, and then discover exactly what it was he had; the location of a remote Asuran outpost where the ZPMs themselves were constructed and filled with energy. It also happened to be an outpost with a small shipyard, that while still capable of creating the Aurora class star ships, was capable of creating them only one at a time, and even then took more than six months to complete the construction of said ship.

The Travelers, with the Wraith gone, settled onto a number of worlds that had been thoroughly culled by the Wraith. They retained their ships, and with help from Lantea, refitted and repaired their ships. The Travelers fleet of ships would eventually form the core of the Lantean Fleet.

When word of the Asuran outpost reached StarGate Command on Earth, the orders were quickly given. Atlantis was to send an expedition to determine the viability of the outpost. Earth sent three Deep Space Carriers to the outpost; the _Apollo_, the _Agamemnon_, and the _Leonidas_. The outpost turned out to be a small version of the Lantean city-ship, perhaps half-again as big. But where Atlantis was all spires and six distinctive arms in a snowflake like pattern, the outpost was only four arms. Each arm, they determined, housed a different manufacturing center, with the central part of the city housing the ore processing stations that sent the refined metals to the various manufacturing arms. One arm produced ships of the Aurora class. Another arm produced Lantean Jumpers. The third arm produced satellites of various types, along with the smaller hand-held devices and would best be described as infantry and squad sized weapons. It was the fourth arm where they found a production and recharging station for ZPMs.

The best part, was that the outpost had fully charged ZPMs in its engine room, and that the ship was made to move from one planet to another, in search of the vital ores it needed to function. It could even settle in close orbit over a large asteroid or land on a moon and carry out its directives. The decision was made quickly, and the first crew on the outpost was led by John Sheppard, who'd been promoted to full bird colonel in the wake of the end of the Wraith Campaign. John Sheppard and his crews spent the next fifty years of their lives on the outpost, moving from moon to moon, asteroid to asteroid and saw more than one uninhabitable planet in the Pegasus Galaxy before at long last, landing the outpost next to Atlantis and shutting down its manufacturing center.

Along the way, they had built every ship in the Lantean Alliance Fleet, contributing four Aurora class ships to each and every member government of the Alliance as local defenses, and two more Aurora class ships built from materials harvested from the member worlds to serve in the Fleet. They had built scores of Jumpers, and hundreds of thousands of weapons for the growing Alliance ground forces.

And then came the news that none of them expected, and that none of them wanted to hear. Earth had gone to war with itself. Nuclear weapons, from an earlier age, had been lofted into the skies and had come down on various nations, obliterating entire cities, and killing six hundred million in the blink of an eye. Cheyenne Mountain had been targeted by no less than six missiles. Two had been near misses; faulty chips or faulty programming, whatever the reason was, and Colorado Springs ceased to exist. Two had been intercepted by Goa'uld plasma cannons that had served as a layer of defense for the mountain since the Goa'uld war. Two had gone all the way, striking within inches of their pre-programmed targets, and obliterating the mountain base. The twenty-five levels above the Embarkation room were an impassable maze of collapsed tunnels, fallen rock, and lethal radiation. If it hadn't been for the emergency shelters the Tok'ra had constructed beneath StarGate Command during George Hammond's tenure as leader, none would have survived at all.

The emergency escape systems, put into place when the Ori had been waging war in their galaxy, had been utilized by the NORAD staff, just minutes before the missiles impacted the mountain. They had been transported down into the inner part of the mountain, directly into the shelters; shelters with at least five decades worth of stored food, water, and various other necessities. That the shelters also had their own gate room, was something every commander of the SGC had known since Hammond. All they had to do was activate the transporter, and the Gate in the Embarkation room would appear in the shelter. As soon as Landry realized that life in the Mountain had come to an end, he ordered the Gate retrieved, and Atlantis dialed.

"Atlantis Command, how copy, over?"

"We read you loud and clear, General Landry. It's a little early for the scheduled reports, though."

"I know. Woolsey, pick up the comms, and cut everyone else off."

Everyone heard the order on the over head speakers, they just didn't expect it. But Woolsey dutifully picked up the headphone and switched everyone else off.

"What is the problem, General?"

"World War III. Someone else started it, but it doesn't matter. We're in the emergency shelters beneath the SGC. We evacuated the SGC, NORAD, Peterson, and the Air Force Academy while we could. Everything at ground level will be uninhabitable for a few centuries."

"How bad is it?"

"Two near misses that took out the Springs, two intercepts, and two direct hits. Everything above level twenty-five is gone; either collapsed or vaporized. And twenty-six through thirty are flooded with lethal amounts of radiation."

"Not good. General, at this time, and on my authority, I'm activating plan Exodus-Four."

"Confirmed."

"How long do you need?"

"Thirty minutes, then we'll start the evacuation."

"Affirmative. We'll be waiting."

The Gate shut down, and Landry looked at his most trusted aide, and Walter knew just what to do.

Both men were well past retirement age, but both men had been among the first to receive the Asgardian Life Extension treatments, giving them additional years to watch their children, grand-children, and great grand children be born, and grow up some.

Close to a decade before, General Jack O'Neill had retired to Pegasus and to a uninhabited and out of the way planet, that was mostly trees and small lakes. It was such a nice place, so unspoiled, that SGC personnel were given the option of retiring there. And quite a few took the offer. Once per year, O'Neill went to Atlantis to receive his ALE treatment. It was pure happenstance that had him in the infirmary of Atlantis when Landry and the SGC dialed in.

"General O'Neill? May I have a moment?"

"Mr. Woolsey? Something wrong?"

"We've just gotten contacted by General Landry."

"I thought the scheduled contacts were around the middle of the month? Or did you change the schedule?"

"No. General Landry is preparing to execute Exodus Four."

"Crap. What happened?"

"World War Three."

"Shit. Tell me you're kidding, please?"

"I'm afraid not. Landry informs me that Levels thirty to twenty-six are heavily radiated. Lethally radiated. Everything above twenty-six is rubble. Unofficial estimates are six hundred million dead. They hit infrastructure targets as well as purely military ones."

"Damn. That sounds like a variation on DropShot."

"I'm not familiar with that term."

"It was a plan; a SIOP. From the really bad days of the Cold War, before ICBMs made plans like it obsolete. I need to speak to Landry."

"Command center. We can dial Earth."

"Yes. Now. Now would be good."

**Atlantis**

**Command Center**

It took less than a minute to dial Earth. And only seconds for Landry and O'Neill to pick up their respective microphones.

"Kinda busy here Jack. What can I do for you?"

"Did the comm gear survive?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"What about the leadership? Any word from any of the bunkers?"

"Negative. They did a Hen House on us."

"Damn. What about the NORAD command staff?"

"General Littman is here with me."

"Bart?"

"Yeah Jack?"

"NMCC or ANMCC. Any response?"

"Negative. Satellite imagery shows nuclear blooms over both sites."

"Can you put out an Emergency Action Message using my codes and your codes?"

"I'll need your codes, Jack."

"Sending them on a sub-channel. Hank should have them by now."

"Got them Jack."

"What do you want in the message, Jack?"

"Any and all surviving commands are to send vital stats to your console. Location and personnel surviving, along with assets available. Can you send that?"

"Hank?"

"We need your codes, Bart. So Walter can send the messages."

"Then what Jack?"

"Then we show up with every ship in the Lantean Fleet, and rescue as many survivors as we can. Surface contaminated?"

"They hit almost all of the birds before the main strike. Only the IOA birds are still transmitting, and they show some pretty high radiation counts all over. They're on their own, Jack."

"Damn it! It's not supposed to be this way, Bart."

"I know Jack. I know."

"Hank, get all the info you can, then commence Exodus Four in fifteen minutes. Confirm."

"Confirmed, Jack. See you soon. Tell Woolsey to prepare for incoming refugees. The shelters are full Jack. We got NORAD in full. Peterson at about eighty percent. The Academy at about sixty percent. Every able bodied person will be carrying some gear or other supply crate. Walter will route full power to the Gate for an extended call."

"Right. See you in fifteen."

Fifteen minutes later, the population of Atlantis increased by something shy of twenty-five thousand personnel, some with families, some without. Three weeks later, when the fleet returned from Earth, the population went up by a similar amount. Pegasus, the Tau'ri contingent within, and the Lantean Alliance was on its own.

**

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Sol System

**The Present (2402)**

The first warning that Starbase One had of any intruders in the system, was of the alarm blaring as automated warp interception systems, a gift from a 'future' Admiral Janeway to Starfleet command, pulled the vessels out of warp. Vessels quickly identified as unknown variants of the standard Breen warship class. There were always some Starfleet vessels in the home system, and these moved quickly to intercept. Two Akira class ships and a Defiant class vessel gave challenge to the Breen ship, which answered with a single immensely powerful beam that cut the three Starfleet vessel in two, lengthwise, along their longest axis, ejecting hundreds of personnel into the cold void of space.

Starbase One immediately pressed the button that triggered a system wide Red Alert. Seconds later, as the Breen warships entered his immediate area of concern, and weapons range, he pushed a second button, one that had been built into every Starfleet facility since the Admiral Kirk, but never used. Double Red Alert. It was used only when the situation was most dire and it immediately caused Red Alert signals to be sent to every ship in the Federation.

Even with full power to the shields, Starbase One stood little chance. Admiral Fitzgibbons ordered the immediate evacuation of the facility after the first Breen shot slipped through the shields as if they weren't there, and sliced deeply into his command. A Steamrunner class ship, undergoing a minor upgrade in the vast internal space dock, was speared and immolated in less than a second, and the beam that had hit it, continued on through the station and out the other side. In a space of less than thirty seconds, the three Breen warships had carved the immense Starbase One into sections, leaving them in orbit, and turning to challenge other ships in the area. The only ships responding were small runabouts, and even smaller shuttles. The Breen commander laughed at their pitiful attempts to save lives, and ordered his small fleet to jump to warp. Their destination was unknown, for the moment.

Ships far and wide began receiving the Double Alert signal. Some were tied up in negotiations or other pressing Federation matters. But enough weren't and they immediately changed their headings to return to Earth.

**

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**

Pegasus

**Lantea**

**Command Center**

It was a long forgotten system that was flashing an alarm, and it took the technicians on watch duty several minutes to trace the source of the alarm. And then it took only seconds to route the information to the correct desk in the correct section. A bureaucrat who had been in this particular office since his graduation from university took one long look at the message and immediately asked for his supervisor's assistance. And that was how it went, up the line, until Brigadier General Jonathan Carter had a message flimsy in his hand.

"Have we confirmed the Ori Weapon's signature?"

"Yes sir. It's been confirmed."

"Damn. They're supposed to be dead!"

"Yes sir. We don't know what to make of it sir."

"Get me Fleet Command."

"Yes sir!"

After that, it was only a matter of saying 'Ori' and 'Earth' in the same sentence. The Fleet was immediately put on a wartime footing, something that hadn't happened since the Wraith Wars had ended close to four centuries ago, and certainly not since General Jack O'Neill had engineered the military evacuation of Earth, all those years ago. Jack O'Neill had come out of retirement for that one, eventually rising to the newly created position of CINC-PG or Commander In Chief, Pegasus Galaxy. And while he had never married or had any children, his clone, Jon O'Neill, had married and had carried on the O'Neill line, a line that survived mostly intact even today. One of Jon's children had married one of Lieutenant General Sam Carter's daughters, and both genetic lines, with their recessive ATA genetic sequences grew a little stronger. Brigadier Carter was the current head of Lantean operations, but it was a job that was there more out of the sake of continuity than anything else. His was the division that for years had been at the forefront of operations in Pegasus for it was the section charged with explorations in the galaxy. It was a galaxy that had long since been mapped out by the Ancients, and revisited by teams from his section. These days, the office was in charge of assigning colonization missions on worlds where there were no native inhabitants, archaeological missions to worlds where there were ruins of the Ancients, or keeping an eye on the Earth satellite system.

In the immediate aftermath of the war that had ravaged Earth, the Lantean Alliance had sent ships to rescue military personnel trapped in underground bunkers or on ships at sea. They had left behind a series of cloaked observation drones, shifted just out of phase from normal space, and cloaked in a twin field that left nothing to see. For decades, the drones had sent reports on the events on Earth, recording the first flight of a FTL ship, recording the arrival of aliens and First Contact. The drones had been there when Captain Jonathan Archer departed Earth orbit on his first exploration mission. They had been there when the Federation took its first tentative steps towards becoming a galactic power. They had been there in good times and in bad times, watching and recording. And when the Breen came to Earth and laid destruction at its doorstep, the drones had recorded the power signature, and sent an immediate burst transmission across three million light years of space to a monitoring console no one really paid any attention to anymore.

Lantean Alliance

Fleet Holographic Conference

"Do you have any more information for us, Jonathan?"

"A few images of the ships that attacked Earth. I know we agreed amongst ourselves that they weren't ready to learn the truth, but I also doubt that any of us expected this happenstance. Whoever these 'Breen' are, they are messing with technologies that are better left alone. They may have gotten their hands on the Ori Super Cannons, and I'm hoping that's all they got. If they found the Book, I don't know…I just don't know."

"We are in agreement then? To lift the quarantine around the Milky Way and to return their and offer what assistance we can?"

"How much do we tell them?"

"As little as possible until we identify the major players. I think we can safely use the 'long lost earth colony ruse' for this one. Call us the descendants of one of those DY-100 sleepers that got launched during the war."

"Alright. And who will be in charge?"

"An O'Neill led the exodus away from Earth. I think its only fair than an O'Neill leads us back to Earth."

"Which one?"

"Ronon O'Neill. He's on his way back from Sculptor and the new Nox homeworld."

"What ships do we send? How many ships do we send?"

"That is the question isn't it? Too few and we appear, perhaps too weak. Too many and we appear like a invasion force. So, we send in one ship, with the others waiting at Midway?"

"Again, what ships and how many?"

"O'Neill has a Destiny class as his command. He goes in alone, and you General Carter, wait at Midway with a fleet. Repair ships, replenishment ships, battleships, carriers, cruisers, and whatever else we can spare."

"The Satedans pledge their support, Generals. O'Neill and Teal'c helped us to rebuild. We will lend you five divisions of our Elite Guards."

"The Genii will also assist. Three divisions of our Light Shock Troopers, and one division of Field Support."

"The Travelers will assist by transferring one squadron of our Elite Attack Cruisers to your command. We will assist our Lantean brothers in driving off these Ori pretenders!"

And so it went, until every member of the Lantean Alliance had had their say and added to the fleet in terms of ships or personnel. General Carter just sat there, mesmerized. He wouldn't have expected this help, from their allies. Certainly Atlantis had helped them all in the beginning. And Lanteans in general would want to help the world where their own ancestors came from, not too long ago. But to expect this amount of help from the other member worlds was something beyond his understanding. Or maybe he was too much like the realist his long since dead ancestor, Jacob Carter, was supposed to have been.

Colonel Ronon O'Neill got the news of his new assignment when his ship, the Destiny class explorer _E. Young_, pulled into the space dock facility around Lantea. His ship was named for the first commander of the Destiny, Colonel Everett Young. The Destiny class was based on descriptions the Icarus team made of the ship, along with designs for it found in Sheppard's Outpost. With fueling systems capable of feeding directly from a star, and systems that were designed to last for millions of years, the few Destiny class ships that were a part of the Lantean Alliance were considered a privilege to serve on. Unlike the ship that Col. Everett served on, however, this ship had her full compliment of shuttles, and had all of her systems fully functional. Three hundred crew, plus an exploration team, and a security team called the ship their home.

Colonel Ronon O'Neill took his name from his several generations past ancestor Ronon Dex, one of whose children had married into the O'Neill line at some point. There were traces of both Jack O'Neill and Ronon Dex present in the man, most notably in his size. Ronon O'Neill was by no means a small man, towering over most of his crew at six-foot-six. But he kept his hair short, like Jack O'Neill had done, rather than in the stylish Satedan trend of dreadlocks. Most families in Lantea had passed down certain heirlooms along the generations, and Ronon was no different. He carried the same blaster pistol that his long dead ancestor Ronon Dex had carried all his life, and he carried Jon O'Neill's trademark G36 with its hundred round drum magazine.

**Sol System**

There were dozens of Federation and allied ships in the system, all conducting either search and rescue or attempting to figure out exactly what had happened. Admiral Kathryn Janeway had transferred her flag to the _Intrepid_, and was waiting for _Voyager_ and her crew to return from Bajor. The Enterprise had just arrived in the system, and already more of the ship's captains out there were looking to Picard rather than to herself. She was the ranking member of Starfleet on the scene, while Picard was still just a Captain. But he had a larger reputation owing primarily to being the Captain of the _Enterprise_, perhaps the most storied ship in Federation history.

"Admiral, we are detecting a build up of an unknown particle, just to one side of the Moon."

"Can you describe the particle, Tuvok?"

"Not without more analysis. It displays the characteristics of both neutrinos and tachyon particles, with elements of chronometric ones as well."

"Source?"

"Unknown. The buildup is increasing."

"On screen."

The view screen lit up and showed a section of open space that revealed nothing for a few seconds before blossoming into what could only be described as an event horizon for purples and whites and grays, with what looked like clouds of vapor mixed in.

"Red Alert! Shields and weapons to maximum!"

"Confirmed. The fleet is responding. There is a ship emerging from the anomaly. Configuration unknown."

"Open hailing frequencies, all sub-space channels."

"Channel is open, Admiral."

"This is Admiral Kathryn Janeway aboard the Federation starship _Intrepid_ to unknown vessel. You have intruded on Federation space. Identify."

The threat of 'or be destroyed' was clearly heard, even if this admiral Janeway didn't come right out and say it. But O'Neill had his orders. And so he responded as meekly as he could.

"Admiral Janeway of the Federation starship _Intrepid_. I am Colonel Ronon O'Neill of the Lantean Alliance vessel _Everett Young_. And perhaps, if you would allow just a little leeway, I could do what I must do."

"Leeway for what, Colonel?"

"On behalf of the people of Lantea, and the survivors of the USS _Pensacola Bay_, I bring you greetings."

"Admiral, the USS _Pensacola Bay_ was a DY-100 sleeper ship launched during the war."

"A lost colony returning home, Tuvok?"

"Perhaps they are."

"Colonel O'Neill do you have any proof of what you claim?"

"Sadly, most of our historical records were lost when the _Pensacola Bay_ crashed onto Lantea. The few records that survived indicated that the man responsible for the mission was a General Jack O'Neill of the United States Air Force. O'Neill was a four-star general who was at one time on the list of succession for the Presidency of the United States."

"One moment while we confirm that information."

"Tuvok?"

"As you are aware, records for that time period are fragmented. However, I have been able to confirm the existence of an Air Force General Jack O'Neill, who was a four star upon his retirement. There is no indication that he was a Presidential Successor, however there is a minor entry in the official record about a position with the Department of Homeland Security where he may have been some sort of minor functionary. Again, as with many records from that particular era, we may never know the full truth."

"Open the channel."

"Colonel O'Neill, and if I may, is there any relation to the General you mentioned?"

"An ancestor, several generations before me. Our records tell us he led the exodus from Earth in the aftermath of the nuclear war. He was a Five Star before his death."

"And you've chosen this particular moment to return?"

"This mission has been planned for a number of years, Admiral. It was just time, I'd say, that we returned here to show you who we are, and to ask why no follow up missions were ever sent."

"As to the follow missions, that one is easy. There is no record of your initial colonization mission. How could we send anyone anywhere not knowing that you were already there."

"True. But since we're only three days away at top speed, surely by now you would have accidentally stumbled upon us?"

"Perhaps. But the question is, with your very different form of FTL, what is your top speed compared to ours?"

"Somewhere in the neighborhood of forty-one thousand light years per hour."

"That's impossible!"

"Maybe for you."

"Admiral! A squadron of Breen Raiders have been detected! They have already passed the Martian Defensive Line! Projected trajectory has them hitting Earth inside of five minutes!"

"If you'll excuse me, Colonel O'Neill. It seems we have some uninvited guests inbound."

"We could assist. As a show of good faith?"

"Very well. Here's a picture of our enemy."

"Small, aren't they?"

"Yes. But very deadly. One of their larger ships destroyed our Starbase in Earth Orbit."

"Tell you what, Admiral. We'll intercept them. If they get by us, you can have what's left."

"We'll meet them together."

"Navigator, plot an intercept course, full burn. Weps, stand by. Senso, tell me you've got them on your screens?"

"Affirmative. Picking up low level shielding, and a minute Ori weapons signature trace. Not the things that came here earlier, I'd say, but probably someone coming for a follow-up visit."

"Right then. Stand by all guns. Weps, warm up the launchers."

"Roger that. Drone launchers are ready and available."

"Give me a full spread, across their bow."

The vessel had moved much faster to the intercept point, much to Janeway's shock. She hadn't anticipated that a ship that size could move like a shuttle. It seemed more nimble and certainly was faster at sublight speeds. Orders were passed among the ships in the system, and many of them jumped to warp for the short trip to the intercept point, and emerged from warp in time to see the _Everett Young_ fire a number of high energy weapons at the incoming Breen Raiders. The Breen fired their own weapons in retaliation. Though it was a substantially reduced in power version of what their warships had, it was still capable of doing serious damage, as evidenced by a shot meant for the _Young_, but impacting on a smaller Defiant class ship that had exited from warp almost on top of the _Young_. The Defiant class heavy escort was cut into sections by the Breen weapons fire, and automated systems on the _Everett Young_ automatically began transporting survivors to the Infirmary.

**_

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_**

Intrepid

To those watching the battle on the main viewer, it was something of a dance, the way the _Everett Young_ moved on the field of combat. Flitting this way and that, it was obvious that the ship had much more control over gravity than even the Federation. For a colonization mission that was launched during the horrors of the atomic war on Earth, these people sure had come a long way. And that was Janeway's first clue about the truth of their story.

The ships under her local command had fired their phasers to no or little effect, and had fired quantum or transphasic torpedoes to no effect. Whatever the shields were on the Breen ships, they prevented the phase shifted torpedoes from penetrating, and that little fact came as an utter slap in the face to the Federation. Their top and most prized weapon was ineffective.

But the _Everett Young_ was having no such problems. Her energy cannons might not work at penetrating the shields either, but they were being used to intercept the incoming fire before it reached the shields. It looked like the vessel was intercepting perhaps eighty percent of the fire aimed at her, and what little did manage to strike the shields, did not penetrate. Whatever they used to power their shields, was certainly different than the Federation. And those torpedoes they fired, while scans did indicate they were smaller than the standard Federation equivalent unit, they certainly packed as much a punch as five of their own units. Whatever they called them, they had no problem penetrating the Breen shields. Six Breen Raiders had come into the system to do as much damage as they could, and six Breen Raiders had been destroyed before they could do much to hurt the Federation yet again. In fact, the battle had been so much of a surprise for the Breen, that they hadn't managed to even get off a single distress signal.

"Open a channel."

"Channel open, sir."

And that was another thing she had a pet peeve about. She was clearly a woman, but she hated the whole tradition of any officer being called 'sir'. It was a long standing tradition, reaching back to the times when all officers were male only. Women had come a long way, especially in the Federation, but some things, just never changed.

"Colonel O'Neill. Any damages to your ship?"

"Negative, Admiral. Be advised, we picked up forty-eight crew members from your destroyed ship. They are in our infirmary and being treated for various injuries."

"Tuvok?"

"There were no discernible transporter signatures during the brief battle, Admiral."

"Colonel. It seems that a number of things you've said are telling me you're being less than factual."

"I see. You're having a difficult time picking the lies from the truth, are you?"

"And you're blunt too. Well I can be blunt. Tell us the truth, or make a new enemy here, right now."

"Very well. I did tell Fleet Command that the 'long lost colony' idea wouldn't work, but they had other concerns. Do you want to come over here, or would you like me to join you?"

"A small measure of trust has been earned for your role in preventing too many deaths on our side. Just myself?"

"Bring up to three others, if you wish."

"Very well."

"Tuvok?"

"I will join you."

"Harry?"

"Wouldn't miss this for the world."

"Tom?"

"B'Elanna would kill me if I went instead of her. She might understand their tech better."

"But she's on Earth and you're here. And you're the closest thing I have to an expert on that era."

"Yes ma'am."

"We're ready, Colonel."

"Good. Identify the others joining you?"

"Commander Tuvok, Lt. Commander Harry Kim, and Lt. Commander Tom Paris."

"Alright. Stand by for transport."

"Stan…"

Before she could finish the phrase, or utter a command to lower shields, she vanished in a flash of white light, and re-appeared on the view screen on the other vessel's bridge. Also in a flash of white light.

"…ding by. Well now, that was different. Your transporters went right through our shields!"

"Yeah. We matched frequencies pretty easily. If you'll follow me, we'll go to the Dome."

"Dome?"

"Our primary conference room. The view is quite nice."

"I see. The ship looks different on the inside. More open. This isn't a new design, is it?"

"What gave it away?"

"The corridors, the walls, the lighting. Every thing tells me the technology is tried and true."

"Very perceptive, Admiral. I think we'll get along just fine. And what species are you Commander?"

"Vulcan."

"Is there anything about Vulcan's that I should know?"

"We prize logic. We reject emotion."

"I see. That's good to know. And here we are. The Dome."

Janeway could see quite a lot from here, namely that they were in motion again and headed towards Earth, with other Federation ships giving them an escort. The problem was that with her long service in the Federation, she could always tell when a ship began to move. Here, she hadn't felt a thing.

"We're moving?"

"Yes. I guessed that you would feel more comfortable closer to Earth. Tell me, Admiral, what do you know of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries on Earth?"

"A time of great unrest."

"True. And to your knowledge, when was First Contact, and with whom?"

"2063, with the Vulcans."

"So all knowledge of the Stargate has been lost. We were afraid of that."

"Stargate?"

"Time for the history lesson, I'd guess. Admiral, a lot of your perceptions about Earth history are about to radically change. Are you prepared to have your world view shattered?"

"How do I know you're telling the truth?"

"You don't, I suppose. But whatever I'm going to lightly cover, is available as a text book in any Lantean Alliance school."

"Very well. Please, shatter my world view, then."


	3. Chapter 2

A/N: Thanks for reading and don't forget to leave reviews.

* * *

Chapter 2

"If you'll permit me a bit of leeway, I need to start with what some would consider ancient history. Some ten to twelve thousand years ago, a space fairing race visited Earth. There was a single alien life form aboard, and it was dying. The alien scanned the planet below and then approached a small village. The villagers fled from the giant ball of light, but one young male villager, showed no fear, and this attracted the alien to him. The alien forcibly took his body from him. All at once, the alien discovered two very important things; the human body was easily repairable, and two, the humans were exceedingly primitive. The alien being set itself up as a God. More specifically, as the king of the Gods that those primitive humans worshipped. The alien adopted the persona of Ra, and sought to have the humans worship him. Ra then called his allies to him, and they took humans as their hosts, and thus the Egyptian Pantheon came to life. Ra gave those primitive humans mathematics, and writing, and language. And those humans eventually realized that they did not want to be slaves, and so there was an uprising sometime about ten thousand BC or so, and the humans chased the Gods off their planet, and sealed their only means of return.

Now we jump forward in time, to 1928, and the Langford expedition to the Giza Plateau. That expedition uncovered a massive stone ring beneath a massive cover stone. Time and the elements had worn away almost all of the markings on the cover stone, but a few remained. The stone ring that was uncovered was actually two circles, one inscribed within the other. One thing was quickly learned; the stone was actually a crystalline metal of a type unknown on Earth. The outer circle had none chevrons space equally about the circle. The inner circle actually spun along a track embedded on the outer circle. The inner circle had thirty nine symbols, that when seven were combined, enabled the stone ring, or Stargate, to connect to another Stargate somewhere else in the galaxy. You see, the Stargate creates a stable wormhole.

It took scientists and engineers and linguists working on the project in the United States, the better part of seventy years to learn what the Stargate did. But when they did, they used it to travel to a planet at the far edge of the Milky Way galaxy. Abydos. So named by the tribe of Egyptian slaves that were taken there by Ra, thousands of years previously.

Starting in 1994, while the rest of the world was growing more and more restless, the United States Air Force, in cooperation with the other United States military services, began to routinely explore other worlds via the Stargate. The first leader of Stargate Command was General George Hammond. He was followed, briefly, by Dr. Elizabeth Weir, then by General Jack O'Neill, and finally by General Henry 'Hank' Landry. The atomic war began during General Landry's term as Commander of the SGC. It was he that executed Plan Exodus Four; the systematic evacuation of accessible military personnel, and their families if possible, via the Stargate to an Earth outpost, in this case the Citadel on Lantea 3.

General O'Neill himself returned to the Sol system a few days later, with every available ship in the Lantean fleet, to rescue as many trapped military commands as possible. As you might imagine, the population of the outpost grew by leaps and bounds. We had, as a result of reverse engineered space craft, our own space going vessels. The first of which was the Prometheus Class, and the only ship in the class, Prometheus. She was a test bed, for various alien technologies, and she carried eight fighters and no shuttles. She was destroyed barely a year into service. But by that time, we had taken those test technologies and installed them on a next generation vessel, the Daedalus class Deep Space Carrier, which was a little larger than the previous Prometheus class, and sported a full eighteen-ship squadron. There would be several Daedalus class DSCs built."

"So First Contact happened in the 1990s?"

"Or twelve thousand BC. Take your pick."

"There are few records that exist from twelve thousand BC."

"The Abydonians, before Ra banned reading and writing there to prevent another uprising, wrote down their history, of where they came from and of who Ra actually was. They passed that history down, from tribal chief to tribal chief. Well actually, from the chief's wife to the chief's daughter, and so on."

"Is this ship a Daedalus class?"

"No. The class is the Destiny class. The purpose of the Destiny class is too serve as vessels of exploration."

"You mentioned a fleet?"

"The other vessels in this contact fleet await my command at the Midway Station."

"And that is where?"

"In the void between galaxies, about two and a half days travel time."

"Two point five days to travel to this Midway Station that you claim lies in the void between galaxies?"

"That is correct Commander Tuvok. Dare I say, you seem skeptical?"

"Travel beyond the edge of the galaxy is impossible. There are no reference points to base a course on."

"Sure there are. You use the milky way as one point, and Pegasus as the other. Or Sculptor, Or Ida. Or Icarus. Or Scott.

"I am unfamiliar with the last three."

"Ida was the home galaxy for an ally of Lantea. They perished during the Ori Invasion of 2010. Icarus and Scott were named for the explorers of the _Destiny_, the first mission to map other galaxies."

"To quote an old friend, seeing is believing. Is there anyway to …"

"You wish to travel to Lantea? To see another galaxy?"

"Yes."

"Very well. First, we will return you to your ship. Then, you will gather together as many others as you wish. And then I will personally take you to meet my leaders."

"Why?"

"Ah yes. That's the rub, isn't it? Centuries ago, during the Exodus from Earth, several phase shifted, cloaked, satellites were left in place. A few days ago, those satellites recorded Ori weapons fire. My ship, and the fleet behind me, were sent to investigate. Imagine my surprise at finding your Starbase One destroyed by Ori weapons fire. And then those small ships with the small versions of the Ori Cannons, and Ori shields. This is not good. Who are these Breen?"

"Who are the Ori?"

"The Ori came to this galaxy from another galaxy. They were a race of advanced beings, energy beings, that wanted the universe to worship them. The choice they gave, the choice they always gave, was worship them, or die. There was no middle ground. We knew of a weapon to kill them, but it was lost. A member of the SGC eventually found and used that weapon; the Sangraal. It killed beings that were millennia ahead of us on the evolutionary scale. Beings of energy that existed on a different plane. A few of them descended from that plane before we set off the weapon. It killed all of the Ori, and freed their worshippers. We fear that these Breen may have found the wreckage of an Ori ship that was lost during the one of our battles with them. We tried to account for all of them, but apparently, we missed one."

"You missed one?!?"

"We missed one. Much too late to cry over spilled milk. Look Admiral Janeway, perhaps using a cover story was the wrong approach for you, but I had my orders, and I tend to follow orders, at least the spirit of those orders. Now, you can go on pouting about what we've said, or you can stop staring the gift horse in the mouth, and climb on for the ride."

"And that means what, exactly?"

"That means, the two branches of humanity, the ones here in the Sol system, and the ones in Lantea, can shake and hug and be friends. You have your Federation, we have our Alliance, and we can be strong allies. From what I gather from my science team about their scans of your ships, your FTL drive is pretty nice, but limited in speed. Since you balked about crossing the void between galaxies, I'm guessing you've never done that. We have. Our exploration service has been to hundreds of galaxies. Imagine the exchange of science we could have, even if we didn't exchange any weapons technology, wouldn't the science alone be worth it?"

"Yes. Yes it would. Alright. Transport us back to our ship. Let me contact Starfleet and pass along my recommendations. How many of us can you take?"

"As many as you want, but try to keep it under a hundred?"

"Very well."

"And one more thing, Admiral, before you go."

"Yes?"

"I'll be calling in some fleet assets to remain here and help protect your own assets, while your negotiating team is in Pegasus. A sign of good faith."

"How large of a fleet?"

"One carrier, four Auroras, an UnRep ship, and a mobile dock."

"Un rep?"

"Underway Replenishment. UnRep. Mobile dock is exactly what it sounds like. Extensible docking arms for deep space repairs. From the little I've seen of your fleet, we can even handle that ship out there named _Enterprise_. It takes two days, give or take an hour, to make the transit in from Midway. The others will remain at Midway until we return to Midway from Pegasus, along with whatever other fleet assets Fleet Command lends to this mission."

"Mission? What mission?"

"We made a mistake once, and missed some Ori tech. It's fallen into the hands of a race that doesn't seem to like you. My mission will be to hunt down those ships, and track them back to their home world, and to disabuse them of the notion that the Ori tech is theirs to use as they see fit. And here is a little something for you, a crystal memory unit, and a reader. The crystal has our history. Our entire history on it, along with a guide to the native species we've encountered both here, which is out of date by at least four centuries, and in various other galaxies, which is current as of this printing."

"Thank you Colonel O'Neill. We're ready to go back now."

**_Intrepid_**

There was a flash of white light and they were back on her ship. A quick command to the helm officer and the small ship was moving towards Earth. She and her officers would have a long debrief with Starfleet Command. She would need to choose a group to go back to their galaxy. A group that would have open minds, yet remain skeptical. 'Seeing is believing.' She remembered the phrase well. She left the bridge to adjourn to her office for a few moments, and found someone waiting for her.

"My dear sweet Kathy. It's been far too long! An Admiral now! I am very proud of you!"

"Q. What do you want now?"

"What? No greetings for an old friend? No, 'Hello Q! Its so good to see you again, Q!'?"

"How is your son?"

"Always asking about his Auntie Kate. He sends his best."

"What can I do for you Q?"

"I thought you might like some information on the people you've just met?"

"Reliable information? Or information wrapped in a riddle?"

"Because my son asked, I'll give you the truth. Whether you can handle it or not, remains to be seen."

"Fine. What do I need to know?"

"These Lanteans, as they call themselves, are originally from Earth. They are, what you would have become had it not been for that dark period following your atomic holocaust. Because of certain treaties, that the Q signed eons ago, we could not ever interfere in their affairs. A more recent amendment to that treaty, signed oh, four centuries ago, allowed us to interfere with your development. Unfortunately, I don't think I've interfered enough. You're barely ready to meet them, let alone ready to travel to other galaxies, but it is time that you grow up a little. The Lantean Alliance spans several galaxies, Kathryn. Its size dwarfs all of the petty little empires in the four quadrants put together. The Q may see you humans as our distantly removed inheritors, but the equivalent beings in that part of the universe have already passed on much of their knowledge to these Lanteans. You remember once, I asked you to be the mother of my son?"

"Yes?"

"For the Q it was needed. New blood that is. For the Ancients, they mixed their gene pool with the human one, tens of thousands of years ago. I think you would call that particular branch of mankind, erm, Neanderthal or was it Cro-Magnon? In any case, some of the genetic sequences survived to this far removed time. They were genetic sequences that are found now, solely within the human population that left Earth four centuries ago. None of that genetic sequence remains within any of the current population of Earth. That genetic sequence allows them to utilize the technologies the Ancients left behind. Evolutionary speaking, the Lanteans are where your branch of humanity will be in perhaps a thousand years. Telepathy is just the tip of the iceberg for them. Some of them can heal with a simple touch. Oh, this is a great time for you to be alive, Kathryn!"

"You heard their offer? About a hundred to visit them?"

"Yes. Magnanimous of them, if you're a cynic. That one ship out there could lay waste to every ship in the sector, and there wouldn't be a thing you could do about it. But they want to be your friends! Embrace them, like a long lost relative!"

"Who should I take? Any suggestions, Q?"

"But of course, my Admiral! Whether you take me up on them, however, is entirely up to you."

"So?"

"Hmm? Yes. Of course. Anyone from your former crew, because you did so well so far from home. And Picard's crew, as dull as that man is, would also be good, since the _Enterprise_ has faced so many dangers in her time. There's just something about a ship named Enterprise that makes the universe stand up and take notice. Certainly, I believe, it would be good to take a few of the other Admirals. If only you had an Archer or a Kirk around, they would definitely be good ones to take along. And as much as I may later regret saying this, it would benefit you to take a few of the other races here. A Klingon or ten would be rather beneficial to you."

"I see. Any other advice, Q?"

"Just one more thing. Your time is rather limited. The Breen, nasty creatures that they are, are advancing far more quickly than they should, because of the technologies they've found and scavenged. What is that phrase? 'United we Stand, Divided we Fall.' Yes. That's the one. Alliances are a good thing, Kathy. You will need all of your friends to stop the Breen. Maybe, even, some of your enemies."

"Well, tell young Q, that you did exactly as he asked. I think that's the first time you've ever been straight with me, Q."

"It was fun, actually. Good bye, for now, Kathy. I will be seeing you soon."

Above them, certain others watched the antics of the young one. Not the human female, but the young one that called itself an omnipotent being. Such a boastful race they had become.

"What are you thinking Oma?"

"I'm thinking that the Q was right about one point, Daniel. That it is time that these two lost branches of humanity reunite. What do you think?"

"Me? Christ, I'm still trying to figure out why I let you two talk me into ascending! I mean, don't get me wrong, I like being able to visit my descendants now and again, but this whole non-interference thing. How do you put up with it?"

"The time is coming soon, where we will have to interfere. To protect our chosen offspring from the influence of the Q."

"Were they always called that, Oma?"

"No Skaara, they were not. Once upon a time, they were our allies in the fight against the Goa'uld. Once upon a time, the Q were known to the universe, as the Furling."


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

**LAS _Everett Young_**

Once upon a time, when the Lantean Alliance was young, there had been clearly lineated lines, between the military men and women in Pegasus. Air Force pilots, Army and Marine Corps infantry, Naval seamen. At some point, all of that had changed, and now they were simply Alliance Military. All the services had been rolled into one and it had been a good thing.

Colonel Ronon O'Neill, though considered a legacy type of student, had not made the military his first choice. He had loved history, and was on course to become a historian. And then had come the Skirmish in Icarus, when a Destiny class ship, leading a colonization mission, had run into those unknown aliens that the original Destiny had run into on her first mission. There had been a general outcry across the Alliance when the mission had been lost with all hands, and recruitment centers had nearly been overrun with fresh recruits. Ronon had altered his career path, and chose the military instead, and he hadn't looked back since then. Flight school had been a natural for him, considering his own father had taught him to fly on an restored F-302A model when he'd become a teen. The fighters that the Alliance used today were direct line descendants of those early 302 fighters that the Alliance had used for close to a century.

But he'd never lost his love for history, and he'd used that love to form a discussion group, with the two groups on his command that stood to benefit from a historical perspective when it came to their sections. For the pilots under his command, the topic this week was a discussion on 'On Yankee Station', the epic novel by Tillman, written in the late twentieth century. For the security forces, and the infantry detachment, the novel up for discussion was poem by Tennyson, 'Charge of the Light Brigade', and the historical event that it was based upon. It meant extra reading, but he enjoyed that in any case. The honest truth was that he had nothing better to do while they were still in Sol space and he was waiting for the detachment that General Carter was sending.

Two days later, the carrier task force, led by the _Hammond_, an Essex class fleet carrier, with the Aurora class attack cruisers, _Corsair_, _Hellcat_, _Spitfire_, and _Wildcat_ as escorts, the UnRep ship _Lantea City_, and the heavy mobile dock, _Servant_. Several Federation shuttles, some were medium range Type 11 shuttles while others were long range Danube class runabouts. The vast majority simply docked, off-loaded their passengers, and then returned to Earth orbit. A few however, were ordered to land in theYoung's hangar bay and remain for the transit to Pegasus. O'Neill knew that this was as much for their own purposes as for anything else. He had anticipated that the Federation would ask to allow some of their own vessels to make the journey back with them. He had expected, however, that it would be one or more of the capital ships, not then Janeway had asked to allow three ships to join them, and he had graciously consented.

Janeway, and a few others, had joined O'Neill aboard his ship for the trip to Pegasus. They were on the bridge for that first jump to hyperspace.

"Admirals. Ladies. Gentlemen. I think you'll enjoy this."

Then he was all business as he started handing out orders to his crew.

"Engineering, we'll need more power to the tow beams. Admiral Janeway, please instruct the ships that will be joining us to tuck in tight. The short the beam, the less power we'll need to expend on that."

"Of course."

"Nav, plot us a quick time course back to Midway. XO, how are we doing?"

"I show green on all boards. We're ready to depart."

"Very well, XO. Weps, lock on to those ships with the tow beams."

"Ships locked and secured, sir."

"Helm. Full power to ion drives. Take us home."

A hyperspace window opened before them, and the ship fairly well leaped into hyperspace. It was almost like a tunnel, with a number of different hues of gray, white, and purple in streaks and vaporous clouds that seemed to stream over the ship and her shields. And the first thing, that the Federation team noticed, was what they didn't feel, and that was the lack of sensation between switching from dead stop to full acceleration to this hyperspace medium. They got tired of staring at it after only a few minutes, and their escorts took them to a conference room they were using for the trip home.

That night, after dinner in the mess hall, the Federation delegation noted that many of the personnel aboard were staying behind after dinner. The Federation team spoke in low voices so as not to interrupt the louder discussion just three tables over. A few minutes later, Col. O'Neill stepped into the room, and the personnel at the other tables stood at attention.

"Colonel's on deck!"

"As you were. I hope you did all your reading this time, Hammer. Cause you know my first question will go to you."

"Yes sir. I read the material this time, sir." 

He motioned with his eyes, to their guests at the back table.

"Ah, our Federation Delegation. I trust everything is alright?"

"It is. Your hospitality has been refreshing."

"We're about to have our monthly Pilot's seminar. You are, of course, welcome to stay."

"Seminar?"

"Once a month I meet with the pilots of the ship, and we discuss a book or a historical event. Everyone has a month to read up on the next subject, and prepare for anything."

"I see. And the purpose?"

"To enable the pilots to think outside the box, especially when it comes to tactical  
and strategic thinking."

"And what do they pilot?"

"Ah. The _Everett Young_ has two attack squadrons aboard, along with one troop transport squadron, one electronic reconnaissance squadron, and three fighter squadrons."

"You mean, one-man fighter type craft?"

"Yes."

"There are reports in our history, of one-man fighters used during the first Romulan War. But until recently, they had gone out of favor. The Federation chose to use larger ships for all duties."

"I see. I can't imagine a day when the fighter won't be used as a force multiplier of some sort. There is such a thing as relying on larger ships too much. But as I said, you're welcome to stay."

"I think that we will stay."

"Alright Hammer, like I promised, the first question of tonight's discussion goes to you. So, why does the author assert that in the long run, the US lost most than it gained from the Cuban Missile Crisis?"

"Certainly in the short term, was the fact that the US had stood up for a ideal, and the Soviets had backed down. There were eight carriers in the area, all ready to take on the Soviet Navy. Long term, however, it proved the validity of the carrier as a force projection tactic, and the Soviets embarked on their own design and construction of a carrier for their naval aviation arm."

"But the US didn't face carrier based aviation assets in Vietnam. In fact, the US never faced carrier based assets. So what was the point of the Soviet carrier?"

"True, the aviation assets the pilots from the carrier air wings on Yankee Station near Hainan faced strictly land based fighters. The two earliest Soviet carriers, the Moskva class, were in service as early as 1964, but the Soviets kept them in the Atlantic to deter the threat from NATO. Even then, those two Moskva class ships were carriers in name only. In a straight up fight against something like an Essex class carrier of the United States, the Moskva, without any escorts would be at the bottom of the ocean. Those two earlier carriers only had helicopters for their offensive craft. Later on, the Soviets added fixed wing capability to their Kiev carriers, but even in a one on one fight against something like a Forrestal class, the Kiev would have been outmatched. Forrestal carried ninety fighters, where the Kiev only carried aircraft, half of which were helicopters."

"Good. You did read his work. I'm impressed. You're up next Iceman. Why did the assertion that Triple-A and small arms wouldn't work against low flying, high speed aircraft ultimately prove false?"

"Because theoreticians in a cube farm never see the light of day?"

"That's true too. But not quite what I'm looking for."

"The doctrine of the day called for multiple approach paths, at different intervals, so as to allow planes attacking a target to enter and exit as fast as possible. That worked up to a point, and then the bombers had to go in lower to avoid the SAMs. But going in lower meant small arms and Ack-Ack. The pilots in those days, also faced the problem of flying through the debris cloud left by the bomber ahead of him. By using multiple attack sectors at low altitude, and with the advent of the fin deployable retarded bomb, like the Mark 82 Snakeye, the problem of the debris cloud was somewhat negated. I say somewhat, because while the pilot may not have worried as much about damage to his aircraft from bomb debris, he was certainly worried about the gunners on the ground. Again, while it was true that no gun control radar could track a fast moving aircraft, they  
didn't have to. They simply threw up barrages of fire. With that amount of Ack-Ack in the air, some plane was bound to be hit sooner or later. After all, it wasn't the bullet with their name on it that they worried about, but rather the ones address 'To whom it may concern'."

"Quite right. Drac, next one's for you. Why was there a policy of not hitting the airfields?"

"The policy was strictly a political one. Speaking from the benefit of a military standpoint, and from a historical standpoint, the pilots should have been granted the authority to strike at a wide range of targets of opportunity. If that opportunity included airfields, the war would have ended much sooner. The US would have been able to deny to the enemy the use of those forward air bases, and forced them into China, where the US would have been able to establish high altitude CAPs over the north, and intercept any planes headed south. But they weren't given that opportunity because some political weenie thought it would look bad on national television if the US had bombed an airfield, and had hit a civilian passenger jet full of tourists. Politically speaking, the war in Vietnam was completely unpopular with the voting public. Demonstrations, sit-ins, violence at home, while the soldiers were fighting a war that would eventually become an embarrassment to the country. I think the US got very lucky indeed, that some enterprising enemy pilot didn't try to take out one of the US Carriers on Yankee Station. Had the enemy done that, the US would have been forced to adopt a major change to the ROE, and I think, the war would have ended much sooner. Whether it would still be two Vietnams or just one unified country remains to be seen.

Certainly, if the US had lost, say a Kitty Hawk class carrier, with a crew compliment just shy of six thousand, there would have been a severe backlash at home, and, I think, the gloves would have come off in a big way."

"How so?"

"Airfields, Ho Chi Min City, you name it, and it would have been added to the list of approved targets. For instance, had Rolling Thunder been of an unrestricted nature, the objectives of materiel interdiction would have been accomplished, and the mission declared a success rather than a failure."

"Any questions? Comments? Alright then, next month, we'll look at Tillman's Warriors. I want you to be prepared to offer opinions on the training methodology he presents in the book. Dismissed!"

Ronon walked over to the Federation Delegation. He still didn't know what to think of the eclectic bunch that Janeway had assembled. He knew next to nothing about any of them, beyond their names: Admiral Own Paris. Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Ambassador Worf. Chancellor Martok of the Klingon Empire. Commander Data; an odd name if ever heard one. And Admiral Janeway. They were all ciphers as far as he was concerned. And he liked a good mystery.

"So, what did you think?"

"Do you always discuss twentieth century events?"

"No. This month was a request from one of the squadron leaders. I started out as a historian. Took quite a bit of history, and was well on my way to a second degree in the field, when war broke out in Icarus. I answered the call and joined up. Tomorrow's discussion with the infantry contingent will be based on Tennyson's 'Charge of the Light Brigade', and the historical basis for the poem. You're welcome to join us, again, if you like."

"You're doing nothing but glorifying war, for it's own sake."

"Nonsense. One has to understand the political motivations of a historical event in order to put it into context. The same restrictions that the US had in Vietnam, applied to the US Air Force during their war on the Goa'uld. Certain targets were restricted, for political reasons, and that was why the war lasted a decade. But because it did last a decade, by the time we were ready to build our own ships and go into space, we were a bit more mature. Having a hand in the elimination of a species tends to make one grow up, fast."

"Elimination of a species? Genocide?"

"Not once, but three times. Well, four if you count the Iratus."

"Four separate genocides? And here we thought you had advanced beyond your barbaric antecedents, when it fact you haven't. Admiral Paris, if we were to vote now, I'd have to say, most decidedly, no to any question of an alliance."

"So noted, Captain Picard."

"Barbaric antecedents?"

"Yes. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries were filled with wars, barbarism, thuggery, and dictatorships that eventually led directly to the horrors of the Third World  
War."

"Picard. Is that French?"

"Yes. What of it?"

"Just making sure I have my history correct, Monsieur Picard, citizen of France, a country that invented the most barbaric form of execution known to man, and then sold  
tickets at the executions. The Guillotine, monsieur Picard."

"That was long before my time!"

"And the depredations of my antecedents were long before my time, Picard."

"That is Captain Picard!"

"And in my service, Captain, a Colonel commands a ship, where a Captain commands something smaller. Like a shuttle, maybe."

"How dare you!"

"No! How dare you sir! I have been nothing if not kind to you and your fellow delegates and all you have done in the last several minutes is not only insult my ancestors, but also all of the Alliance. Calling us barbarians! Indeed sir, we did commit genocide! We had no other choice! Had we let the Wraith remain as a species, they would have eventually finished us off and come for you. Even your Federation would have been no match for them! Are you familiar with Nietzsche, Picard?"

"What does his philosophy have to do with anything?"

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you. Sound familiar, Captain Picard?"

"What of it?"

"We may lay claim to the genocide of the Goa'uld, but that one that can be laid on Earth in its entirety. The Wraith, the Asurans, even the lowly Iratus Bugs; those were the opening days of the Lantean Alliance, when Lantea faced these enemies all alone. mistakes of our ancestors. We fixed those mistakes and eradicated them from history. We have done much in the four centuries since, to prevent ourselves from falling into the same mold as those monsters we fought!"

"Captain Picard! You will stand down this instant!"

"My apologies for my tirade, Admiral Paris."

"You will offer a formal apology to Colonel O'Neill. Just as you are not responsible for the actions of your French ancestors, so he too is not responsible for the decisions made long before his birth!"

"I can not, in good conscious, do that, Admiral. The Prime Directive states..."

"I know what it states, Captain. You do not need to lecture me on the Prime Directive. That applies to non-warp species!

"They are a non-warp species! They do not warp space around them to achieve faster than light travel!"

"A mere technicality, Picard. They very obviously do have faster than light travel. And from their top speed, I dare say, it is much faster than anything we could imagine! Our best ship, your Enterprise, can only maintain Warp 9.99 for just thirty-six hours! At that speed, it would take us over one hundred years to cross to their galaxy! They'll do it in days! What does that say about their technology, Captain?"

"I still will not apologize, Admiral. You may chastise me all you wish, but I will not do it!"

"It is not necessary, Admiral Paris. Captain Picard is a man with an opinion. And we all know how that particular saying goes, don't we?"

"What saying are you referring to?"

"Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one."

With that, Ronon fairly well marched out of the mess hall and back to his quarters. inside, he was seething with rage. But he knew something that the Federation would never understand. That to make the truly hard decisions, it is often necessary to break a few rules. After all, one did not make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, yes?

Later on, in his cabin, as the events of earlier played back in his mind, he saw some truth in what Picard was saying. Not that he would agree with him, and his blanket statements, but there was a grain of truth in it. Ronon wondered how they would react to the historical records from the exodus following the atomic war of the 21st Century. 

Certainly the historians that had examined the records on Lantea had vilified General O'Neill for his decisions. But he had the private journals of O'Neill. The thought processes, the dilemma the man faced. Ronon liked to think that in a similar situation he would make the right call, but the truth was that every generation would put a new spin on the actual events. New interpretations of history, as it were. He wanted to be there, when the Lantean Alliance Council met to greet the Federation delegation. But that was something way above his pay grade.

The Council had requested him for this mission. As far as he was concerned, it was mission complete the minute he deposited the Federation team on Lantea. That meant he could go right back to the new Nox Homeworld to continue his negotiations. After four centuries of observation, the Nox had finally agreed it was time for a limited, a very limited, technology exchange.

Next Evening  
ETA Midway 12 hours

It was seminar time again, and again there were members of the Federation Delegation in the mess hall. Picard, he noted, was not present.

"I hope you all are ready for this one. Let's start with you Captain Hermes. Why did the charge fail?"

"Their CO, the Earl of Cardigan, led the charge from the front. Now any infantryman will tell you that the really good commanders lead from the front, and in this the Earl of Cardigan was no exception. But not once did he look back to check on his men. He assumed that they were with him, and that his support was with him, when in fact it wasn't. That, combined with the wrong target, was what caused the failure. Six hundred men went in, a lot less than six hundred came out. It was a massacre, in every sense of the word."

"So a combination of a lack of support and a wrong target is what caused the charge to fail. And the terrain?"

"Well yes, the terrain had a lot to do with it. I would say it was a major factor in the failure of the charge. Riding into a valley, where the enemy controlled the high ground, and was able to fire downward with their guns, meant that anyone riding in that valley stood a fair chance of death."

"Right. Captain Danvers, this one's for you. Can you name two other battles that if Tennyson was writing his poem now, he might have used as inspiration?"

"Uhm, real or imagined?"

"Oh this I have to hear. Imagined?"

"The samurai cavalry charge at the end of 'The Last Samurai'. Japanese Samurai on horseback, charging up a hill, with Gatling guns and artillery looking down on them."

"Yeah. I remember that one. And the real one?"

"Pickett's Charge. Uphill charge against fortified artillery. It was Pickett's defeat that pretty much broke the morale back of the South, and eventually led to their surrender at Appomattox."

"Any others?"

"Not sure if it qualifies or not, but the battle at Somosierra, when Napoleon invaded Spain. Technically, the Spaniards had the high ground, with four batteries of guns, spaced along a narrow pass. But, the guns were manned by reservists, and they were overcome by the Polish and French regulars, and that led to Napoleon's forces capturing the pass and eventually Madrid. Still, had the guns been manned by regulars, with infantry support, the Polish and French regulars would have had a more difficult time in capturing the pass, and they might even have been beaten back. I understand, from the historical record, that the man in charge of the forces at Somosierra was later killed by the survivors."

"Alright. Anyone find a more recent example?"

"Icarus-32, sir."

"Yeah. That would be the one, wouldn't it."

"Was it as bad as the media said it was?"

"Worse. Much, much worse."

"How would you know, sir?"

"I was there, Private. I was a lieutenant, fresh out of OCS, leading a squad of Satedan Specialists. _Corregidor_, of the Icarus-32 campaign."

"_Corregidor_, sir? Wasn't that the one with..."

"With more than eighty percent casualties?"

"Yeah. That one? That ship, sir?"

"Yeah. It's a nightmare I get to relive all too often."

"Would you tell us about it?"

"Icarus-32 was one of the planets that Destiny visited when the Icarus team caught up to her. Gorgeous, idyllic world. With one exception. That damned obelisk. The Colonization and Research mission, number thirty-two of the over five hundred missions launched to various planets, had that particular world as its target. Until Fleet Command on Lantea received the SOS though, no one knew that anything had gone wrong. The 58th Satedan Shock Forces got assigned to the Alamo Class Troop Lander, the _Corregidor_. If you remember the Alamo Class, they were designed to land on a planet, and take control and hold until relieved. Those were our orders. Hold until relieved, either by Gate or by ship. You officers might image, that as a Lieutenant fresh out of OCS, I was all gung-ho and no brains. The best words of advice I ever gleaned from Jack O'Neill's journals,  
were to listen to my squad sergeant. I did. Well, some of the time in any case.

_Corregidor_ carried the 58th and 67th Satedan Shock Forces, and the 33rd Genii Infiltrators. Three thousand men and women, and our equipment, along with the fighters assigned for CAP duties, and the troop deployment shuttles. The landing was completely unopposed. The ship came down near the colony, and my unit drew the lucky straw and got sent out on a quick recon. The colony was empty. Coffee still in mugs, food still on plates, wash hanging out to dry, fires long since gone to ash. It was strangely quiet. Hell, we couldn't even hear birds or insects. Whatever had hit the colony, the colonists hadn't even known about it. By the time we got back to the ship, the piers had been deployed and air operations were under way.

There's nothing quite like the sight of an Alamo Class Troop Lander in full operation. Carryalls moving here and there, dropping artillery pieces, and shield projectors. Troops moving in and out of the ship, bringing their equipment up to speed, to patrol the perimeter. The big HMBTs coming down the ramps and moving into position for long range recons. There's just nothing like it in the universe. I had literally taken just one step into the ship to head for a debrief when the encampment came under fire.

My response was textbook. But it didn't matter. Within seconds of those first shells coming in, the alert klaxon was warbling, and we all shuddered as we realized the implications of the tone. Chemical weapons attack. I hit the shield generator on my chest, and started to haul out the MOPP gear. The perimeter troopers weren't so lucky. They died quickly though, and that was a good thing. But from that point on, the enemy plasma shell barrage was a constant one.

The fighters on CAP duty were quick to respond, but they got shot down as they broke formation over the _Corregidor_. Inside of ten minutes, we were down to just the reserve planes and shuttles, and command held on to those like a miser holds on to his last penny. Command tried to send out the HMBTs but they were picked off, one by one, as they broke out from under the shields. The enemy was able to shift their fire faster than the artillery batteries were able to fire on their last position. The Fire Finder Radars just couldn't compute the distances fast enough. Of course, the major problem was that the Alliance hadn't fought a ground campaign since the Wraith War, and because of that, certain techs had pretty much become stagnated. The artillery might have gotten upgrades to plasma and ion bolt, but the FFRs had changed in decades. You ever see a Hover Main Battle Tank go up? It's almost a pretty sight, until you realize there were soldiers in that tank.

The enemy were blocking our communications. They were blocking access to the Gate. Command might have known that we would be missed in a week, but the rest of us, we didn't know that. We were cut-off from support, and we knew it. So we spent our lives wisely after the shield started to fail."

"How could the shields fail, sir?"

"Destiny Class and Alamo Class share the same fuel source."

"Oh. That's not good."

"Tell me about it. So the shields started to go. The engineers couldn't maintain full shield coverage, so they kept them up on an instant-on sort of thing, blocking the heaviest of artillery fire, while the rest of us kept our heads down. Then they came at us. For the first few days, it was a slaughter. We killed them by the thousands, and still they came on at us. They made breastworks of their dead, shooting from behind piles of corpses. During a lull in the fighting, Command sent the 33rd Genii Infiltrators and most of the 67th Satedan Shock Troopers out on a long and winding path to try and come at the enemy from the flank. It failed. They had other units waiting for us to try something like that. The 33rd and 67th fought a running retreat back to the Lander, losing men and equipment along the way. Those two units, went from brigade strength, to about two companies in size. From over a thousand men to just under two hundred a piece. The 58th was still mostly intact, and I had a feeling Command would try again.

On the eve of the sixth day, we got our orders. They were going to try a long range transport, to put us behind enemy lines, and our mission was to cut through the enemy lines and get back to the Lander. The entire 58th, along with a few elements of the 67th and 33rd stepped into the transporter. We appeared about one hundred kilometers behind the enemy position. Most of the ground transports were gone, destroyed in the first attacks, along with the majority of the HMBTs. Command sent us out with the last of the heavy equipment. Twelve ion cannon tanks, and three heavy plasma artillery guns, organized into three tank troops and one artillery battery. That, plus the flat floaters that the _Corregidor_ had aboard for cargo movement, were it for long range transport.

Tanks at the left and right flanks, with artillery and infantry in the middle. Not the best formation, but I was only a Lieutenant and had no say in the matter. We crossed about ninety kilometers before some alien thought to look behind them and saw our formation approaching. As the first shells arced in, our formation ground to a halt and we scattered. Two floaters took direct hits, but thankfully no one lost their lives. The artillery let fly with rounds of high explosive, while the tanks and the rest of the floaters started pumping out clouds of chaff and smoke, and the few jammers we had started pumping out some impressive wattage. The next five kilometers were a slaughterhouse. Floaters took direct hits and I saw men vaporized or melted before my eyes.

Still we advanced, into every stronger fire. But the enemy was now forced to fire in two directions, and it looked like the plan was succeeding. The few remaining planes went out and started dropping ordnance on the enemy position. I thought we were going to win the day. By that point in the fight, my squad was down to myself, and the sergeant. As a unit, we were no longer effective.

Then the enemy wheeled out some monstrous looking thing, and our forces started to fall back the way we had come. The tanks got taken out in one fell swoop, followed by the artillery. Whatever the enemy had rolled out, it had an impressive beam weapon that had two immediate effects. It caused any liquids in a body to dry up. Not immediately cause that would have been merciful. No, bodies dried out in the span of a few score minutes. The second effect was to shift the object just slightly out of phase. So try as we might, we just couldn't render aid to the fallen. But we could hear them, and certainly, we could see them. Writhing in agony as they turned into dried out husks.

Those of us who survived that disastrous retreat took shelter behind a small hill. One of the survivors crawled to a point just below the top, and put his camera at the apex, to keep watch, while the rest of figured out just what in the hell had happened. What was left of the brigade wasn't much. And I found myself the ranking officer. A mixed group of Satedan Shock Troopers and Genii Infiltrators; it wasn't much of a command, but it was all I had. I made a plan, and then gave a go hour.

The moons had set by the time the go hour came round. We crawled out through the grass, occasionally popping smoke canisters, that in the dark of the night, looked like a rolling fog bank. Before I knew it, we were smack dab in the middle of the enemy encampment. Those with explosives, had been planting them as they went along, setting everything to blow in a staggered sequence. On the common channel, I gave as silent a countdown as I could, and when I reached zero, I counted to two, and threw my grenade as hard as I could to the side, towards a stack of crates of some type. Everyone else was doing the same thing, some of us picking the same targets, some picking individual targets. As soon as the grenades cooked off, so did the explosives, and we jumped up to a low crouch, and ran for all we were worth, while the enemy milled about in confusion.

As I got close to the _Corregidor_, I pushed the panel on my wrist that sent the codes to the main ramp, and about forty-eight of us made it back. I had left another twelve men behind. Forty-eight with me. There were enough left in the ship, combined crew and infantry, that when added to mine, we numbered about six hundred. That was out of thirty-six hundred that had started the mission. The enemy's back was broken, and they retreated from the field. When communications were restored, the senior ranking member of the Command Staff, managed to get an SOS off. As dawn broke on the ninth day after our landing, Fleet assets showed up in orbit. They had made a speed run from Lantea, and we were saved. But none of us, the six hundred that survived, would ever forget that mission."

"Damn. Were you sent home, sir?"

"No. We got reinforced, and I got a field promotion to Captain. Took over an oversized company of survivors. And Command sent us a new ship, and we proceed to corral the aliens to one system. Fleet command blockaded the system, and they eventually came to the bargaining table, and my company stayed on the front lines until it was over."

"Do you keep in touch with any of the survivors, sir?"

"You came aboard just before we started this mission, didn't you Corporal Tyrus?"

"Yes sir."

"All of the company commanders, and their staff of officers, for the Infantry units aboard this ship, are survivors of Icarus-32. Alright. I think that's enough for one night. Next time, we'll examine the role of the infantry in the Ori Campaign. Dismissed!"

After the infantry had cleared the room, O'Neill walked over to the Federation delegation.

"Learn anything?"

"At our training academy, we have a test for senior level students called the _Kobayashi Maru_. It's designed as a no-win scenario, and it's supposed to test the character of the student commander. There is no right or wrong answers to that test. In your own way, you described a no-win scenario. Considering your circumstances, I think you performed more than admirably."

"I see. On that note, I'll see you at noon on the command deck, for our arrival at Midway. Good evening."

* * *

**Office and Quarters**  
** Col. Ronon O'Neill**

As he stepped in to the office that adjoined to his private quarters, O'Neill noticed his Executive Officer, dozing lightly on a chair.

"XO?"

"Huh. Oh Colonel. It's just you."

"Don't sound so disappointed, XO. What brings you round?"

"I caught part of the story, sir. It brought back memories."

"Yeah. Want a drink?"

"Yeah."

"A nice single malt from Sateda. A toast. To comrades that stayed on Icarus-32, on permanent patrol."

"To absent friends."

"What brings you round. The truth this time."

"I'm just wondering how Fleet command will react when they read the official log. You were supposed to stay with the Ruse, Ronon. They crafted that cover story for a reason."

"I know Rakai."

"Why did you do it? That Federation Admiral might have had her suspicions, but you broke far too easily."

"Why? Why did they send me? I don't follow orders well. You know that. You know why Fleet Command chose me for this mission?"

"No."

"On the off chance that they had information on Jack O'Neill. On the off chance that they considered him a criminal, I had orders to offer myself as an exchange. Punishment for past transgressions, committed by General Jack. I told them the ruse wouldn't work, that anyone with half a brain would be able to see through it. But they insisted. And if the Federation knew of Jack O'Neill and his exploits, if they new that he took only military survivors and not the civilians that were in radiation free areas, if they considered him a criminal of epic proportions, then I was to throw myself on that grenade. I have no problem doing that for a fellow soldier, but those bastards in Fleet Command, wanted me to fall on my sword. And for what? For the slim chance that the Federation knew about us? No. There was something else going on, I just didn't have the clearance to know about it. So, fuck them. I wasn't going to fall on that grenade."

"What do you think they'll do?"

"I'm hoping to get back to the new Nox homeworld. Talk to Lya and Anteaus some more. Learn more about General Jack from the people who knew him. I'm tired, XO. The lies, the bull shit so thick that we need knives to cut through it. What do you think the Federation is going to say about our own Eugenics program? Like we didn't learn enough from the Eugenics Wars on old Earth."

"You know it was necessary. There was no way we could have grown as fast as we did without that program. And hey, it wasn't like we made the same mistakes as Earth had already done. So what if there were two generations grown in maturation chambers rather than in human wombs. It wasn't like they created clones and then flash downloaded the memories of the recently deceased."

"Two generations, Rakai. Our ancestors created them as genetically diverse as possible, but they were limited to the genetic makeup of the Atlantis crew, and of the crews they rescued. Ok, so the kids were pretty damned smart, but for two generations, the ones that did the fighting were the Genii and the few Satedans and Jaffa that had gotten together, and the very few militant Lanteans left. Yeah, so the population of Lantea increased dramatically, and yeah, there was no population cap and yeah, they encouraged people to have as many kids as possible. Hell man, they gave out fucking bonuses for couples with the most kids! The Woolsey Doctrine. As the civilian director of Lantea it was his idea, and his idea was law.

When they found out that Woolsey had altered the scans, together with General Littman in regards to surface radiation on Earth, well, I guess it was a good thing that O'Neill was in another galaxy when that came out, cause I'm sure he would have put Woolsey down in a spectacular manner. He knew he wouldn't be able to control acivilian population that had never been exposed to the Stargate, so the orders came to rescue only the military. Plan Exodus Four. As much as people these days call O'Neill a bastard for leaving the civilians behind, his hands were tied by Woolsey before any decisions about rescues were made."

"I heard him called once, 'Woolsey the Weasel'."

"It's an appropriate moniker. What do you think, XO? You think they're going to take my command from me? For disobeying Woolsey's last commandment?"

"The Ruse was his idea?"

"Shit. His idea and his orders to be followed should we ever contact Earth again. And there was to be no contact, unless one of the Alliance's old enemies came to pay a visit. He felt safe in make that pronouncement since the Ori, the Wraith, the Replicators,  
and Goa'uld were gone. And since we'd never been in a declared war with the Aschen,  
he didn't include them in that list."

"I didn't know that."

"Neither did I, until they broke the seal and read the orders. Orders that had to be followed, since he was at one time, the authorized leader of the Alliance, if not Lantea."

"So you looked for any excuse to do things your own way?"

"As soon as she detected even the slightest hint of subterfuge, I gave it away. It doesn't matter now. I'll face Fleet Command with my head held high and let them do their worst."

"The Brigade will stand with you sir, if it comes to that."

"Thanks XO. You were a hell of a squad sergeant then, and you're a hell of an XO now."

**Bridge **  
** Noon, Next Day**

Most of the Federation Delegation were on the bridge, wanting to see this mid-way point between the galaxies for themselves. As stations went, Midway wasn't a spectacular one. It was a quarantine zone, so persons from one galaxy could get 'caught up' on immunizations for the coming galaxy. It was a stopping point for freighters in need of servicing. Midway was the first such station, but the Midway Class of stations now existed at the mid-way points between the other galaxies that Lantea or the Alliance had an interest in. Of course, in this case, the line of Stargates that connected Midway to the Milky Way had a slight problem. The only Gate left in that galaxy was the one on Earth, buried under thousands of tons of rock. There were others, buried for various reasons, that the automated dialing program on Midway had logged and marked, but there were no missions to the Milky Way anymore. At least not until O'Neill's mission. An O'Neill had been the last CO to go to the Milky Way, and Fleet Command felt it best that an O'Neill should be the first to return.

"Navigator, position please."

"Tens seconds to decant. On final approach to Midway. All systems green."

"Put up a three-way split screen, once we're back in normal space. Midway in the middle, where we were and where we're going on either side."

"Aye sir."

"Four. Three. Two. One. Hyperspace emergence."

"Welcome back _Everett Young_. And guests. Belly up to the bar, for the latest round of Immunization Cocktails."

"Affirmative. Nice to be back in this part of space, Midway. Status on the fleet?"

"After the dispatch of the Carrier Group, General Carter ordered the rest to return. Based on your reports of these 'Breen', he wants some heavier and faster firepower. We're expecting some Aurora Attack squadrons, and a few Alamo Landers any day now."

"Any ideas which Alamos?"

"_Corregidor_, _Sateda_, and _Little Big Horn_, sir."

"ETA?"

"They are about eighteen hours out."

"Right. We have two Federation ships and one of their allies, a Klingon ship, under tow. Set up the quarantine bays so we can process them as quickly as possible."

"We'll be set-up inside of an hour. Midway out."

"Colonel O'Neill? What is this quarantine?"

"We don't know what bugs have become endemic to the Milky Way since we were last there. Certainly you don't know what bugs Pegasus might have. First stage is a decontamination chamber. We'll look up the Klingons in the Asgard database, and see what we need to learn about them and any bugs they might have that would be dangerous  
to Pegasus."

"Asgard Database?"

"The Asgard were a one time ally of the Alliance. They were already an old race when Earth first encountered them. Their history stretches back over at least one hundred thousand years. They knew they were dying, and so they called the legendary SG-1 to them, gave them the Asgard Core, and then committed mass suicide as the Ori arrived at their world. They destroyed their world, leaving a Black Hole in their wake, to buy SG-1 time to evacuate ahead of the Ori."

"They left you all of their technology?"

"And their history. Everything they'd done since becoming a space-fairing race, a hundred thousand years before. They were one of the members of the Great Alliance. Sadly, only the Nox remain, of that original Alliance."

"Never heard of them."

"Of course not. They left the Milky Way about a hundred years after the atomic war on Earth. They said they struck a bargain with the Furling, and they left."

"The Furling? Who are they?"

"Don't know. Never met one. But they were another member of that long ago alliance. In all out travels we never met a Furling. But we have trade treaties in place with the Nox. I was at the Nox homeworld before being sent on this particular mission."

"I see."

As soon as the quarantine procedures were complete, _Everett Young_ jumped back into Hyperspace. The last thing that Ronon needed to see was the _Corregidor_ again. The remains of the six hundred soldiers he led through the Icarus campaign were all on this boat of his. He knew none of them wanted to see the _Corregidor_ again, so long as they lived. It just brought back too many memories of comrades lost in action. For two and a half more days, it was business as usual. No seminars, no running in to the Federation folks, especially considering he was taking his meals in his own office. He was preparing himself for the upcoming dog and pony show that would mean, pretty much, the end of his career. Yes, he'd disobeyed orders, and had told the truth. He could try and justify it, but he knew it wouldn't work. He broken the faith with Fleet Command, and he knew  
they would crucify him for it. Even if they didn't discharge him from Fleet Service, he'd probably be posted to some distant outpost, the same way General Sheppard had been when he'd pissed Woolsey off one too many times. It was the only thing he had left of his ancestors. Their journals. And their infrequent visits to him.

* * *

**Later that Day**

**O'Neill Quarters**

"If it's any consolation kid, I'd a done the same thing. Woolsey was an ass. Why he wanted us to lie about where we came from was only something he could tell us. And since he's dead, I doubt we'll ever know the answer."

"What do you think of what Earth became?"

"These Federation types you mean? I don't know what to think. There's something about Janeway and Picard though. Teal'c would have called it a different scent, than what the others have. I can't seem to put my finger on it though. If I didn't know better, I'd say those two had contact with one of the Ascended. But since there aren't many of us left, I've already ruled that out."

"Wonderful. Another mystery. And Fleet Command?"

"The only support you have would have been General Carter, who's one of our descendants. But Command sent him to Earth. No. I think you're fairly well screwed there, kid."

"Thanks for the heads up, Grand-Pa."

"You know, I've asked you repeatedly to stop calling me that."

"Its easier than great-great-great-great, erm, how many 'greats' would it be  
anyways?"

"Too damned many, kid."

"So, Uncle Cam. How's life among the Higher Planes these days?"

* * *

A/N: Review if you like.


	5. Chapter 4

A/N: The next update will be on June 6. All of this is Texan writing and idea. The only thing that I contributed to is Cardassia being bombarded by the Breen.

* * *

Chapter 4

**Lantean System**

**Lantea 3**

**Atlantis Citadel**

_Everett Young_ had arrived in orbit of Lantea 3 without any problems. One of the Aurora Class Attack Cruisers, currently outfitted in a diplomatic role, met them in orbit, and discharged the Young to the orbital space dock for re-supply. O'Neill had already beamed his reports and logs to Fleet Command, and so he was not surprised that upon arrival at the space dock, there was a message for him to report to Fleet Command, and Fleet General O'Riley upon his arrival. O'Neill took his time, putting on his battle dress uniform, not the formal one with all the sashes, but the informal one, that allowed him to wear the Sword of Sateda. It was as much a ceremonial sword as it was a functional one, and it told anyone who had even a grade school education in the Alliance, that the man wearing it was a bonafide hero. The sash that held it fast to his uniform was a blood red color so intense that it almost seemed to drip with each step. There were Spikes around the semi-circular hand guard; each one represented a confirmed victory in one campaign or another. Essentially it was the same sword that his long ago ancestor Ronon Dex, had carried. When Dex had called the surviving Satedans together, to rebuild their world, they had adopted his sword, and gave out to Heroes of Sateda. It was the Satedan equivalent of the Lantean Medal of Honor, and was one of the highest awards a soldier of the Alliance could receive for actions in combat.

He walked proudly through the corridors to the offices of the Fleet General. Anyone else would have seen only what he let them see, a soldier returning from some mission. But those who knew him, and for some reason, he was running into a lot of his former Brigade among these corridors, but to those who knew him, he didn't walk so much as he stalked through the corridors, looking for his prey. His target? The Fleet General.

**Offices of the Fleet General**

**General William O'Riley**

If there was one thing that O'Riley hated, it was someone making him wait. He'd expected such throughout his life, but it happened less and less as he rose through the ranks. These days, no one made a Fleet General wait, not if they valued their careers. Apparently, Colonel O'Neill didn't. Value his career, that is. Finally, after more than forty-five minutes beyond the appointed time, his aide announced the Colonel's presence in the outer chamber. O'Riley summoned him in with a bellowed roar. Only after the doors had slammed behind him, had the General looked up, and saw what the Colonel was wearing. The neat and ordered rows of decorations, the Blood Red sash that held the sword and the pistol opposite each other, and the man himself, who looked at the General like he was a bug waiting to be squashed. He needed to nip this one in the bud.

"Colonel O'Neill. I've read your report. You failed in your mission. You will explain your actions, immediately mister!"

O'Neill canted his head to one side, then back upright, seeming to contemplate his words before he spoke in measured tones.

"The Woolsey Doctrine was flawed sir. Written by a man who very well may have been insane when he wrote it. I followed my orders, which stated that if they did not believe us, I was to tell the truth. I did."

"They were mildly suspicious!"

"They wanted the truth. I wasn't sure they could handle it, but I gave it to them in any case."

"You weren't supposed to bring any of them here! They know where we are now, and you exposed them to a much higher level of technology than by rights they have access to! You broke every tenet of First Contact!"

"So I did."

The General, Ronon swore, was getting more and more red-faced by the second. It almost looked like he was going to pop a few blood vessels if he wasn't careful.

"And you admit it? You freeborn sonofabitch! You leave me no choice, Colonel. Effective immediately, you will be reduced in rank…"

"No."

"Excuse me?"

"I said no. In fact. Kiss my Satedan ass. Here's my resignation. You can put that in your bitch of a mother's womb. Oh, my bad. You didn't have a mother's womb to nurture you."

"Out! Out of my office this instant before I call for the Guards!"

"Call'em. Sateda will file an immediate protest."

"Guards! Remove this 'thing' from my office!"

But the guards were Satedan, and they had seen what the General, in his rage, had missed. The rank insignia wasn't Alliance. It was Satedan. The Guards formed up around a man who wore the equivalent rank of Fleet General, and escorted him from the area. Once outside the range of any Fleet listening devices, they stood at attention, and waited for his orders.

"Sir? Where to, sir?"

"The nearest Satedan controlled hangar bay. Or Satedan influenced. I need to get to Sateda immediately."

"Yes sir. We'll escort you there ourselves."

"What about the Fleet General? Aren't you his guards?"

"We're Satedan sir. First and foremost. Command may have assigned us here to this highborn, but we are loyal to Sateda. You wear the rank of General, we answer to you."

Before they could move off, they were surrounded by members of O'Neill's former unit.

"Guardsman. I have orders for you. You and your fellows will remain here. Do what you can to assign yourself to the Federation Delegation. If it means you have to bribe someone, then do so. Suggest that each of the Federation guests have their own escort from your Guards. A one person escort. If you are successful, then contact me through the embassy. I may have more instructions for you at a later time. My own guards will take me to Sateda. I thank you for your loyalty. It will be rewarded."

The Satedan Guardsmen, recognized the insignia of the guards now surrounding the General. The Sword and Pistol of the famed Satedan Six Hundred. O'Neill was quickly hustled to a hangar bay where a small Satedan diplomatic transport was waiting. It was quickly given clearance to launch, and departed the planet immediately, heading for Sateda.

**

* * *

Citadel of Atlantis**

The Federation Delegation had beamed down to the reception area of the Atlantis Citadel, and were immediately treated to a spectacular view through the windows of a setting sun over a glassy sea. The whole of the citadel of Atlantis was surrounded by ocean. A snowflake like pattern for the city, that rested on what they believed to be an artificial island, and no one wanted to disabuse them of that mistaken idea. The High Council of the Lantean Alliance met with their long separated cousins from the Milky Way Galaxy and found them to have a unique perspective on the universe and on life in general. For each similarity, there was a glaring difference. The Federation had done away with poverty, with disease, with money. The Alliance had mostly done away with poverty, had eliminated most diseases, but were still trying to figure out the common cold. But the one glaring difference was that people still earned a living wage for their efforts.

The delegates met with their counterparts and arranged for a simple trade of technology, as a sign of good faith. In another part of the Guardsman Tyr Emmagan managed to arrange to have his squad of Satedan Guards assigned to the Federation Delegation as individual escorts. He'd traded with the assigned team, giving them tickets, hotel vouchers, and more importantly, gaming vouchers for the New Reno Resort and Casino on Lantea 6; it was a place where anything and everything had a price. The assigned guards left, and Specialist Emmagan stepped into the role where he was needed most.

**Sateda**

**Central Command**

Ronon marched easily through the labyrinthine corridors towards his goal; the offices of the triumvirate of Five-Stars that ran all things Satedan. In the centuries since the founding of the Alliance, Sateda had gone from a bombed out world, to a world that produced the best military forces in all of the Alliance, followed closely by the Genii. One of the ruling Five-Stars was Genii.

Centuries ago, when the remaining Satedans and their Jaffa allies had returned to this world to rebuild, they had done so with the help of the Genii, who loaned them enough seed-stocks to jumpstart their agricultural program. The entire budding Alliance had pitched in after that, and the rubble and debris was soon cleared. Word spread quickly around Pegasus, and survivors of the Wraith attack, and their families, returned to Sateda. One thing became clear and rather quickly. There weren't enough women for the male population. Dr. Jennifer Keller, wife of the legendary Ronon Dex, solved that little problem by becoming the first woman on Sateda to take a second husband. And then a third and fourth. When Sheppard and his wife and children had finally retired from military service to spend out their remaining years on Sateda, they opted not to merge with the Dex familial line, and instead formed their own, with the blessing of the Triumvirate. As it was then, so it was now, and the Triumvirate had a member of the Dex line, a member of the Sheppard line, and a Genii of the Emmagan line.

"Enter and be recognized, Hero of Sateda."

"I enter and am recognized. Ronon O'Neill of the Dex line."

"Approach, child of Dex. What of the mission assigned to you by the Alliance."

"First Contact completed."

"And the mission given to you by the Triumvirate?"

"Truth revealed."

"You have done well, child of Dex. What of the Alliance response to your actions?"

"They believe me to be in a prison cell. Guardsmen loyal to Sateda assisted in spiriting me away. Those Guardsmen are now in position as escorts to the Federation delegates."

"Well done. We have a new assignment for you, if you are ready?"

"I stand ready, to do the will of the Triumvirate."

"Very well. We have a new ship for you, one constructed in secret, over the course of years. It is the first of a new class of vessel, and it will not be the last. She is untested, and she awaits you, at your leisure."

"New class?"

"The Fortress class. Your ship is the _Talus_. She awaits you, in the Dark Clouds Sector."

"My assignment?"

"Triumvirate EWO Directive One-Zero-Six."

"I obey."

Ronon left the building behind him in a daze of thoughts. One-Zero-Six. Of course he had been briefed on all of the EWOs when he'd been pinned with his first star. Emergency War Orders. A relic of the past. A relic of old Earth. It would place Sateda, the Triumvirate, and many of the oldest allies of Sateda and the Genii at odds with the Lantean Alliance; odds that could very well mean widespread civil war. It would all depend on how well Ronon could carry on One-Zero-Six. Relics of the past indeed. That was what 106 was all about.

His footsteps carried him home, to the Dex Stronghold, without him realizing it. His orders didn't specify a time-frame for his assumption of command., and the Dark Clouds Sector was on the edge of the galaxy and the furthest location from Lantean recognized space. There was an outpost in the area; a Satedan outpost. At one point I time, when Sateda had been at the height of her pre-Wraith invasion power, the outpost had been a thriving colony. Now, it was only one more memory of the past power of Sateda.

Most of the people he called family were off working somewhere in the Alliance. Few members of the Dex familial line stayed on Sateda once they came of age. He had been the exception of course, as he tried to obtain those precious titles that would allow him to pursue his first love; history. But war had come, and he had answered the call, like so many generations of Dex before him. It was rearing its ugly head again, and this time, he was afraid. His steps took him down to the sub-basement where a Jaffa named Rya'c had once upon a time built a meditation chamber, and taught them the art of Kel'no'reem. It was something he hadn't practiced in months, not since the last time he'd been at home. It was time again. His shoes remained by the entrance, and he lit a number of candles, but sitting himself on the lightly padded floor. After several hours, he came back to full awareness, back into his own mind, and realized he was not alone in the room. His eyes opened, and he recognized the man seated across from him.

"Father, sir. It is good to see you again."

"And I you, my son. You have been gone too long from these old walls."

"And I must leave again. Soon."

"You have been to the Triumvirate."

It was a statement, not a question, and Ronon, realized all at once the implication of it.

"I have. EWO 106."

"Then the rumors I have heard about Contact with Earth are true?"

"They are. It is strange. Their technology has taken a completely different path. They have forgotten all knowledge learned at the feet of the Ancestors."

"It is strange, indeed. When do you depart? You must visit your mother first."

"Soon. And I will. It has been good to see you again."

"Yes. I will see you again."

"Yes."

Ronon stood, his knees protesting the action after so long on the floor, padded or not. Retrieving his shoes, he let his feet follow the time worn path back to the surface levels, and thence to the green spaces at the rear of the Dex Stronghold. Here, in this place beneath the sheltering trees, were the graves of all who had gone before him to the land of the Ancestors. Here too, was the grave of his mother, who had passed on, when he answered the call for war. He kneeled in the soft grass by her grave and spoke the prayer for the dead, invoking the Ancestors to watch over her. He told her of his successes and his failures, and his hope for the future. As he stood to leave, he felt certain that he smelled her perfume, and could feel a light breeze caress his arms, like an embrace from his long ago dead mother. A smile came to his face, and he felt true happiness, for the first time in months.

He caught a shuttle to the orbital Gate facility, and took the next Gate. From there, he hopped from Gate to Gate, until he came to his destination, the research colony in the Dark Clouds Sector. An escort awaited him, and soon he was in a shuttle headed into the deeper parts of the nebula that was the Dark Clouds Sector. Through a break in the nebulous vapor, he saw the scaffolding for the first time. A truly immense structure, that dwarfed the ships within its grasp. Ronon could clearly make out four ships in various stages of assembly with at least two that appeared completed, at least on the exterior. The ships grew larger in the window as the shuttle he was on drew closer, till they finally eclipsed the stars, and he, finally, was inside the belly of the beast. A guard waited for him, as he stepped off the shuttle, and he followed the young man, to the bridge of the ship. Another guard had taken his luggage to a nearby cargo transporter, and had beamed his two simple bags directly to his quarters.

As he stepped onto the bridge for the first time, he took note of the layout. It reminded him, in far too many ways, of the layouts of the old Daedalus class ships, with minor exceptions.

"General's on deck!"

"As you were. Rakai. Why am I not surprised to see you here?"

"The Brigade got orders to report here when you got your orders to report to Fleet Command. I told you they wouldn't like your actions."

"Yeah. So you did. How long have you been here?"

"A week. Getting the last of her systems checked out. Getting the supplies stowed aboard. Making sure the crews are bedded down. Things like that."

"Very well. Tell me about this ship."

"The designs came from the Archives. It was something Sateda had planned to build to take the fight to the Wraith, before the Wraith came to Sateda. As you might imagine, it was never built. It would have become the object of a historian's paper, had not a young engineering student of the Sheppard line, not been looking through the Archives. The file for this ship was unnamed. He brought to the attention of his mentor, who happened to be a retired One-Star. He brought the young man's find to the attention of the right people, and the project got its start. That was twenty years ago. It took that long to move the right people into place, to build the shipyards, and to start accumulating the infrastructure the Triumvirate required to begin production. The first keels were laid down a little over six months ago."

"Twenty years to get ready and six months to build? Seems almost anti-climatic."

"The hardest part was having Sheppard's Outpost assigned to a nearby sector for the Colonies in the area. Many of the same structures that go into a colony's infrastructure, are used in the shipyards. The first five ships produced were mining and refining ships, to procure the raw ores that would be turned into structural elements for the Fortress class."

"Tell me what I need to know Rakai."

"Sir. This ship, by itself, is the equivalent in firepower to three Alliance Carrier Task Forces. There are eighteen strike squadrons, three reconnaissance squadrons, nine transport squadrons. There are two landing bays that run the length of the ship, with openings fore and aft. We can land and launch aircraft at the same time, two at a time from each bay. That is, with both bays operating, we can launch four craft, and recover four craft simultaneously. Each bay also houses one mining and refining ship, and four deployable flak trap lines."

"Flak trap lines?"

"A long cylinder, with dozens of Ack-Ack cannons for fighter-interception, weapons-fire interception. It takes four Trap Lines to cover the ship."

"Color me impressed."

"There are four freighters that are normally docked with the exterior of the ship, via six connector clamps; three extending from the freighter, and three extending from the ship. The freighters can land on a planetary target, are fully shielded, and can double as troop transports."

"How many troopers?"

"One Division."

"A whole Division? Which one?"

"The Satedan 19th. One Brigade of Shock Forces, one Brigade of Orbital Droppers, and one Brigade of Light Armor."

"Are there enough Orbital Drop Pods for an entire brigade?"

"The ship produces them as it needs them. We have two industrial capacity Asgard replication devices aboard, along with thousands of the smaller, personal units, assigned one per set of quarters."

"I think I'm going to like this ship. Status?"

"Most of our fighters are aboard. The 19th has been trickling in over the last week, and will continue to do so over the next week. We're taking some supplies aboard as we speak, and I estimate another week at most to round out our cargo holds."

"Good. Do you know our mission?"

"Not yet. Command said you would bring those orders with you."

"I'll announce it once we're underway. As soon as they're aboard, I'll want to speak to our Air Group Commander, and the Division Commander. Set it up please. I'm going to find my office and get some paperwork done. You have the Bridge, XO."

"I have the Bridge. Aye sir."

**

* * *

Milky Way Galaxy**

**Cardassia Prime**

At the end of the Dominion-Federation war, the Cardassians had switched sides, joining the Federation Alliance against the Dominion. The result of which had cost eight hundred million Cardassians their lives. Even in the quarter century since the war's end, such great loss of life had not even come close to replacement. The air was polluted, the soil made infertile by whatever the Breen had done, and the infant mortality rate, was at an all-time high. Even with assistance from a Federation team, their was great fear in the Federation that the Cardassians, as a species, would not live to see another century come to pass.

But Cardassians were a stubborn lot, and hadn't yet realized that the universe had it in for them. Some Cardassians capitalized on the fear that lingered after the orbital bombardment, and had made sizeable fortunes selling, of all things, deep underground shelters. Most communities on Cardassia had had at least one built in the years immediately after the end of the war.

The end of the orbital bombardment at the end of the war, meant several things to Cardassia Prime. First and foremost, it meant an end to their small part in the war. Secondly, it meant a series of mass burials for those who had died in the orbital bombardment. Thirdly, and as a result of the weapons used, the air and the soil were left badly damaged, and fourth, it almost seemed as if Cardassia Prime herself were taking revenge for what had been done to her. With no appreciable flora to hold on to the soil, fierce dust storms swept the lands. The facilities that had been built for surprise orbital bombardments began to see use as shelters from the severe storms that now plagued Cardassia Prime. The sirens went off often enough, that almost all Cardassians took to the shelters immediately, and because of that one little factor, Cardassians would be able to look history in the eye, and spit in it.

The first warning that Cardassians had that something was amiss, was the sound of the sirens as they went off, everywhere at once. Cardassians, used to the sounds of the sirens, took immediately to the shelters, and waited for the all clear signals to sound. Most storms lasted only a few minutes or perhaps ten minutes. When ten minutes became twenty minutes, and still the all-clear had not been sounded, almost all of the shelters turned on the official intra-shelter news channels, and heard the news. For the first time in nearly a quarter century, the Breen were back. And they were taking no chances. Cardassia Prime was under orbital bombardment. Bombs of some extreme type were falling on the surface, and beam weapons of unimaginable energies were striking the surface, and obliterating the remains of cities.

When the bombardment ended, three hours later, nothing moved on the surface of Cardassia Prime. The pitifully small contingent of Federation ships patrolling the sector had been dealt with, and their remains had already fallen from orbit and onto Cardassia herself, adding to the death and destruction. Even the few escape pods that had managed to get away from the now destroyed Federation patrol had been destroyed. The Breen waited in orbit, for another three hours before taking their leave. Two Battleships, and a dozen Raiders was all it had taken to raze Cardassia Prime to the ground. Those still in the shelters, waited until a Federation relief force arrived before leaving the underground facilities. What they saw when they stepped foot on the surface, was a world devastated. Those who had managed to get into the shelters, were all that remained of the Cardassian peoples, save for a few who might have been in other places in the galaxy.

**

* * *

Ida Galaxy**

**Near the Asgard Black Hole**

_Talus_ decanted from Hyperspace deep within the Ida Galaxy near the Orilla Black Hole. This was where as a species, the Asgard committed mass suicide, killing themselves and detonating numerous devices on their world. Later readings from an Earth ship showed a black hole where Orilla had been, and prevailing theory was that the explosives on the planet had initiated a short lived fusion reaction that had powered a new sun into being, but the gravitational forces overwhelmed the newborn sun and caused it to collapse in on itself, forming a massive singularity in its wake. The fact that the Asgard computer core held a reference to such a weapon probably also influenced that theory. Their respects paid to the Asgard, _Talus_ jumped into Hyperspace again, this time headed for the Milky Way. The ship stopped again just outside the galaxy itself, waiting for the final 'Go-No Go' order from Sateda.

**

* * *

Pegasus Galaxy**

**Lantean Alliance Command**

It was done. The ink on the new treaty between the Federation and the Lantean Alliance wasn't even dry yet when the all manner of ships began to appear in Lantean space. Modifications would be made to the Federation and Klingon ships, which would then proceed to return to their own galaxy, begin to disseminate the information, and make preparation to take one the Breen.

Two members of the official delegation had opposed the treaty in full, but had no say in the overall scheme of things. Two lower ranks against two Admirals? Not even a fair fight. But it set the stage for one of those persons to be contacted through less than normal means. Enterprise, a Sovereign class vessel, arguably one of the most powerful vessels in the whole of Starfleet, was on its way back to Earth. Her engines had been modified to allow passage into the realm of Hyperspace, and already the scientists aboard the ship had collected enough data to satisfy a planet full or scientists and engineers for at least a century. They had already discovered one important factor for Hyperspace travel; the distances in the Hyperspace realm, compared to normal space, were many times shorter.

The person that had chosen for contact was someone that had been under surveillance for some time. It was during the return voyage to Earth, that contact was finally made.

Captain Picard had been strongly against the treaty, calling the science offered too much for the Federation to handle. Had he only known the truth, he would have done more to stop it. But the Captain had had his objections overruled, and the modifications had been made to his ship, and now he was here, in the Ten-Forward lounge, having a cup of tea and contemplating the mysteries of the universe. Until a man approached him.

"Permission to sit here, Captain?"

"Permission granted. Hmm. I thought I knew everyone aboard ship. I can not seem to recall your name."

"I came aboard at Lantea sir. I am not one of your crew. And if you'll give me a moment to explain before you call security, I'll tell you what you need to know."

"Very well. Explain yourself."

"Who I am does not matter, Captain. What I am, however, is important for the moment. I am a Satedan Specialist. This is a rank within the Satedan military forces. I am also a freeborn citizen of Sateda, and that little bit of information will be explained in due time. I know that you opposed the signing of the treaty. You need to know that there are many member worlds of the Lantean Alliance who also opposed the treaty for the same reasons. We were overruled, just as you were. I have a set of coordinates here. Once you return to Earth, you must find a way to meet my superior at these coordinates. A lot more will be explained at that time, with the gist of it being the dissolution of the treaty between your Federation and the Lantean Alliance. The question is, are you willing to commit what is essentially treason in order to do the right thing?"

"And what is the right thing?"

"First Contact between our two peoples would have happened, eventually. When your Federation was ready to take that step beyond your own Galaxy. The discovery of the Ori weapons by the Breen has necessitated the moving up of that time-table. We could have come here, taken care of the issue, and then returned all without your being the wiser, but instead Fleet Command ordered the Ruse. And here we find ourselves. Your ship has been modified with our technology. You are traveling faster than you ever thought possible. Are you sure your Federation is ready for the things we take for granted? Wormhole travel. Travel between the galaxies. Weapons that can obliterate entire worlds in just seconds. Tell me you don't want this Captain."

"Tell me, in terms I can understand, how a Specialist ranks in Starfleet."

"Very well. In your terms, I would be a Commander. My duties to Sateda include the lead of a strike force of Specialists. If you choose not to go to those coordinates, to not believe me, then I will go quietly with your security team. You can arrest me on whatever charges you see fit. But I will not survive a day in your Brig. The information in my head, Fleet Command would extract and all would be for naught."

"How much time do I have to make a decision?"

"Until we reach your Earth. Until then, here is a book for you to read, Captain. A history of the Lantean Alliance, as told by those who were there, through the journals and diaries of the 'founding members'. For instance, were you aware that all of the so-called founding members, Generals all of them, Sheppard, Carter, O'Neill, Mitchell, among them; all of them were eventually forced into exile. The book will explain why. And just so you know, possession of that book is considered a crime within the Alliance."

"I see. Thank you. I will read it and give you my decision. Meet me here an hour before we arrive at Earth."

"I will. Good night Captain. I enjoyed our little chat."

**

* * *

Milky Way Galaxy**

**Tollana**

_Talus_ was in orbit and cloaked. They were where Tollana had been once upon a time, but the world below them was not what O'Neill's journals had led them to believe. There was a civilization upon it, but it had regressed to an earlier stage in its history. Gone were the simple buildings of the Tollan and the building that O'Neill had called the Curia. In its place was a coliseum of grandiose proportions. Gone was the city that Carter had described as ultra modern and peaceful. The attack by Anubis had done more damage than they had previously believed. The Tollan people had regressed to an earlier stage of the evolution, and what the planet resembled now was something along the order of a early 21st century Earth, had the Roman Empire not ceased to exist.

Squads of Infiltrators were sent down, and over the course of several hours the truth became apparent. The attack by Anubis, four centuries previously, had broken the will of the Tollan. It was all present in an archive in the Imperial Library, in the journals of a man named Narim.

After the bombardment by Anubis' forces, the Tollan people had been broken. Their much vaulted advanced technology had failed them, and from among the survivors, a man named Jule, had risen to power, preaching a return to the ways of old. The survivors, needing hope to latch on to, embraced the teachings of Jule, and the Roman Empire was reborn. Centuries had passed, the man had said, since they had been brought to their first home world, Tollan, from a place known only to them as the First World; the world of the Tau'ri. They had evolved quickly, at the hands of a benevolent Goddess, who had eventually abandoned them to their fates. Thus did the Tollan peoples abandon their early civilization in return for something more modern, and significantly more advanced. The Goa'uld had attempted to reclaim Tollan at one point in time, but had been soundly defeated by their former slaves. In time, the Goa'uld abandoned the Tollan, and the Tollan became more than they had been.

Then Anubis had come to their world, and they had lost all that they had built, over the course of millennia. The teachings of Jule had given way to a New Roman Empire, a mirror image of how they had started their lives. With the attack by the Goa'uld fresh in their minds, many of the survivors turned to the ages old practice of worshipping various Gods and Goddesses. When the people elected Jule as their first leader of the new era, he changed his name, and became Julius, and eventually he resurrected the idea of the word Caesar. Emperor of Rome. And thus was Rome reborn, albeit with a more modern approach.

The tools they had recovered from the rubble of their former civilization had helped them to build their new capitol city. Gradually, the tools of the old world gave way to the tools of the new, and thus only in museums, could those tools be found, without power, and without a clue by the general populace as to where they had come from, and how great a power they had once been. _Talus_ left orbit. Their orders for the moment, were simple ones. Make contact with the long ago allies and trading partners of the Tau'ri.

As the _Talus_ approached the Hebridan system, there was nothing on long range scanners. The system, once home to a thriving technologically advanced civilization was quiet. As the ship approached the planet, they noticed several things. First, was that the planet in questions was completely covered by forest. Second, the traces of the Hebridan civilization were gone. Overgrown by vines and various other types of flora. No one was left alive on the planet. And there weren't even any archives they could access to determine the fate of the people. It was turning out to be a bad day for them.

World by world and civilization by civilization, they visited the former acquaintances of the Tau'ri. Worlds that had once upon a time been home to hundreds of human civilizations, were now pale memories of their past lives. As if someone had swept through space, removing all traces of their existence. It was a sobering thought for O'Neill and his crew. Finally, O'Neill directed them to a set of coordinates, where they would await word of the next part of their mission.

**Near Sol Space**

**_Enterprise_**

**Ten-Forward Lounge**

Picard had read through the book several times, and the truths it had revealed had startled even him. It made it easier to make up his mind. And he met the Satedan Specialist at the appointed hour.

"Made a decision yet, Captain?"

"I have. If I take my ship, the Federation will be suspicious. I have made arrangements to retire upon my return to Earth. Some of my crew, the more trusted members in any case, will be joining me; either by going on leave or taking sabbaticals before beginning their next assignments. I assume you will want to join me?"

"My orders sir, are to act as your personal guard."

"Very well. I will be traveling to another ship that Starfleet has agreed to transfer to my command. I have told them I wish to retire and that I also wish to spend some time traveling the stars before returning home to my family's vineyards. They have agreed to loan me a ship that is currently sitting in the mothball yards near Luna. I could use whatever help you might be able to offer to refit it the ship I've been given. Here are the current specifications of that ship. Meet me in my quarters when we arrive in Earth Orbit, and we'll take a shuttle pod to the new ship."

"Aye sir."

Picard had handed the young man a PAD with a single ship on it. Saber Class. It was small enough for his needs. He could have also have chosen a mothballed Soyuz class, but the amount of modifications it would need to bring it up to date were just too many. The Saber class ships were a relatively new addition to the fleet roster, and to have found one in the mothball yards was something of a surprise, until he learned that it had no warp core, among other things. It had been a test bed craft for new technologies, during the Pathfinder Project, but those technologies had failed, and the Starfleet Corps of Engineers had deemed it too much trouble to refit the small ship back to standards. But for his purposes, it was more than adequate, and the only major stumbling block now, was finding a suitable crew. Picard sent out a number of letters, asking certain people to meet him at his family's vineyard in France.

After their arrival in Earth Orbit, Picard and his new escort, took a small shuttle pod to the mothball yards near Luna, where after processing his paperwork, Picard was given access to the Saber class vessel. After a quick inspection tour, Picard and his escort managed to activate the sublight drives and take the ship out of the yards and place it into a geosynchronous orbit over the vineyards in France. Then the two of them beamed down to the Picard home.

"You do realize, that at some point, knowing your name would be considered a polite thing, yes?"

"Yes. I guess it would at that. I am Michael Keller, of the freeborn Dex line."

"You've mentioned freeborn and highborn a few times, but I have found no reference to those terms in the history you gave me."

"That is a rather complicated, and oft times touchy subject. You read where the last appointed administrator of Atlantis, Richard Woolsey of Earth, initiated a project called 'Rapid Expansion'?"

"Yes. But there were no details of that project, and the title could refer to almost anything."

"Rapid Expansion was an in-house code name. One of our allies, the Asgard, arguably among the oldest races Earth had ever met, had, for at least thirty thousand years, been cloning themselves. Cloning, and transferring their consciousness to new bodies. In the end, that was what did them in. An experiment to inject new DNA sequences into their decaying matrices had a bad ending, and they were left with no choice but to either wither away and die, or go out with a bang. They chose the bang option. Still, our own scientists knew that cloning could be successful for a limited number of iterations. Especially since there was so large a genetic base to draw from. There were those who were opposed to the program, and they chose not to allow their own genetic samples to be used.

Those who were cloned and grown in maturation chambers had had their genetic sequences tweaked. The result was a segment of the population with significantly higher intelligence factors, along with other heightened senses. They were called the Highborn. Those who chose to go the natural route, were later designated the Freeborn, as in free from artificial enhancements. In the span of a generation, Atlantis went from a population of some fifty thousand, to just over a quarter million. The birth of the second generation, tripled the population. A third generation quadrupled it. After the third generation, 'Rapid Expansion' became 'Continual Expansion', and 'Selective Birth'. Even among the Highborn there were those who were elevated by virtue of whom their genetic donors had been; the elite of the elite.

The problem was that Atlantis had chosen only to enhance their intellectual prowess, not their fighting abilities. Atlantis and her descendants became the leadership caste of the Alliance, while the member worlds contributed the brawn to their brains."

"I take it that there is a bit of animosity between the two castes?"

"More than a bit. It was the Highborn that signed the treaty with the Federation, but it will be the Freeborn that will have to enforce it. The majority of the Freeborn, however, have a different set of ideas. And hopefully, we have you as an ally."

"Without a warp core, we can't go anywhere."

"Can one be replicated?"

"Up to a point. The dilithium must be real. It is what controls the reaction in the mix chamber between the matter and anti-matter."

"Do you have schematics available for a basic warp core?"

"Yes. Such things are readily available."

"Can you obtain some of this dilithium?"

"Yes. One of the men I have invited here for this meeting, I'm certain he can obtain what we need."

"Good. I'll feed the schematics into my personal replicator. Let's see what it can come up with."

Picard had sent out a number of letters, but some had gone to addresses that were more like 'In Care Of' than actual locations for the intended recipients. Still, as he saw one of those 'In Care Of's arrive at his front door, he knew that something was going right, for once.

"Captain."

"Commander or is it Officer, now?"

"Lt. Commander, actually. It's been a long time, sir."

"Please, Jean-Luc. Especially since you're not in my chain of command any longer."

"Of course. Jean-Luc. I must admit that your letter, brief as it was, did intrigue me. What is this problem that you foresee?"

"Please. I've asked others to attend this briefing. I'd like to tell it only once. Everyone else should be arriving over the next hour or so. Have you kept up your helmsman rating?"

"Yes. But I currently serve as a tactical officer."

"That is good to know. Have a seat, enjoy some of the house wine."

Picard looked out the window towards the transporter stop, and saw six more coming up his walkway. Three were virtual unknowns to him, but came recommended by the other three. How they would fit in to his crew was anyone's guess. Behind them, he saw the transporter flash again, and three more started their walk up the path. One had been invited, the other two; he had heard they were on Cardassia Prime and out of Starfleet. Picard bade them welcome, offered them a beverage, and had them sit down. Then, to make matters simpler, he asked them each to stand and give their name, and their last position.

"I will begin. Jean-Luc Picard. Captain of the Enterprise."

"Lt. Commander Ro Laren, Tactical Officer, Deep Space 9."

"Thomas Riker, executive officer on a commercial freighter."

"Commander Geordi La Forge, Chief Engineer of the Enterprise."

"Commander Data, executive officer of the Enterprise."

"Ensign Wesley Crusher, and I've just graduated from the Academy."

"Ensign Naomi Wildman. Also a recent graduate."

"Ensign Icheb Brunali. Recent graduate of Starfleet Academy."

"Commander Annika Hansen, astrometrics officer of the Voyager."

"Dr. Julian Bashir, former Chief Medical Officer of Deep Space 9"

"Chief Petty Officer Miles O'Brien, former operations officer of Deep Space 9."

"Dr. Bashir, Chief O'Brien. I must admit to being curious as to your presence, considering I do not recall sending out any letters to you."

"We heard you were gathering a crew, Captain. And we were hoping it had something to do with the Breen. We were on Cardassia Prime."

"And?"

"You mean you don't know?"

"Know what?"

"The Breen came in force, not that the Cardassian military could have fought them off. The Starfleet patrol in the sector faired no better. Two of their big battleships, and maybe a dozen raiders; they razed Cardassia Prime to the ground. The only survivors were in the storm shelters. Cardassia Prime is a memory, Captain. There probably aren't even enough Cardassians to re-seed the species."

"I had not heard. When did this happen?"

"Weeks ago."

"Is Starfleet aware of the incident?"

"Yes sir. They are."

"And they haven't sent any aid?"

"None whatsoever. When we heard that you were gathering a crew…"

"What made you think I'm gathering a crew?"

"With the people in this room?"

"Ah. Yes. I guess that was rather obvious. Very well then. Stay. I seem to have a need for a Doctor and a competent Operations Officer."

"Good."

"What do you know of the recent First Contact?"

"You mean with the people who claim to be from another galaxy?"

"And here I thought such information was close hold. Yes, Dr. Bashir, with people who claim to be from another galaxy. They invited the Federation back to Pegasus, to talk about treaties. I opposed this. The Federation signed those treaties. I still oppose them. And now I have good reason. I've learned that the treaty is a ruse. They intend to send a small fleet here, to help with our Breen problem. But the fleet will arrive just a bit too late to save anyone else except their treaty partners, namely Earth and the Klingon homeworld. Everyone else, as far as they're concerned, is cannon fodder for the Breen. With so few allies left to the Federation, the Lantean Alliance plans to invade us and forcibly annex us."

"Is there any proof of this? If there is, and the Federation is unaware, why haven't they listened to you?"

"Because the carrot was too enticing."

Michael Keller had been listening to the conversation from just the other side of the door. Now he felt it necessary to step in.

"Who is this man, Captain?"

"I am Michael Keller, of the Dex Line of Sateda, Pegasus Galaxy. A Specialist with the 309th Satedan Guard."

"So you think you're from another galaxy?"

"I am."

"Commander Hansen, Ensign Brunali. As former Drones, do you recall any mentions of the Borg traveling to other galaxies?"

"Travel between the galaxies is impossible. The lack of reference points would prohibit such."

"Blah, blah, blah. Travel as you know it, because you are limited to, what was it, oh yes, warp drive. An inherently slower method of travel. By the way, what do you mean by Drones, Captain?"

"They were former members of the Borg Collective."

"The cybernetic race that attempted to invade the Federation?"

"Yes. I was also one of them."

"A blend of mechanical and biological, yes?"

"Correct."

"Flawed, in other words."

"The Borg strove for perfection."

"Thankfully then, the Borg never had a chance to meet the Asurans or the Replicators. I daresay the Milky Way would not have survived such an encounter."

"Are you speaking of the mechanical beasties that O'Neill refers to in his journals?"

"The one and the same. The Replicators damn near wiped out the Asgard on their own, and we do know they were responsible for eradicating several civilizations in this part of the universe."

"That was in the history you gave me."

"Yeah. Persistent little buggers. Shoot them with any sort of energy weapon and they just absorb it and replicate. Shoot them with a projectile weapon, and they break apart, only to reform. It took time, but we were finally able to develop a weapon that neutralized the bonds between cells. For instance, if a Replicator were biologically based, then it would have been the same thing to say we had developed a weapon to strip all of the protons out of each cell. With no cohesion, the cells fell apart, inert and useless. A simplified explanation, but usable for this purpose."

"And your alliance wants to forcibly annex the Federation?"

"Not my alliance, sir. I am a soldier sworn to the Satedan Triumvirate. Sateda, Genii, and others are members of the Alliance, but we are Freeborn, they are not. They want to annex your galaxy, not because of the Federation, but because it is home to the only Gate in existence that leads to Altair, the homeworld of the Ancients. The Alliance wants the technological advancements they believe are due to them. With that technology they can become as Gods to every other species in the universe. They would have everyone worship them as Gods. Do you want that?"

"No. What do you require of us Picard?"

"I have a ship, in geo-stationary orbit over this house. A Saber class that was fitted out as a test bed for the Pathfinder project. When the power requirements became too great, Starfleet gutted the ship and left it in the mothball yards. When I requested a ship from there, they let me have this particular Saber. Mr. Keller tells me his personal replicator can build anything we need. Geordi, I need a Chief Engineer."

"Count on me, Captain."

"The Saber is designed to have a crew of forty. We don't have near that amount. I need recommendations, people."

"There are a few Cardassians that would like some payback, sir."

"We'll see what we can do. Let us beam up to the ship, and see what we can do."

Transporter beams activated and the people assembled in the room were whisked up to the ship that sat in orbit. In main engineering, Geordi took one look at the mess that was left of the engines and proceeded to sit down and just shake his head. Even with Data's help, the task seemed almost insurmountable.

"Commander La Forge."

"Commander Hansen. Something I can do for you?"

"I believe it is more along the lines of something I can do for you. I still have my Borg implants as does Ensign Brunali. Between the two of us, we can assist in repairing this section."

"Do what you need to do."

"Excuse me, Commander La Forge?"

"Mr. Keller, was it? What can I do for you?"

"I wanted you to look over these specifications before I set my replicator on its task."

"Ok. Let's take a look. Yes. Everything looks quite good. How long to start replication?"

"The first task is to replicate the replicator. The next larger size is oh about this tall and maybe this wide, and it can build everything else we need. That should take about ten minutes or so. After that, it's simply a matter of having the available materials to reconstruct. It's not so much a replicator as it is a resequencer of matter, done entirely at the sub-atomic level."

"Ok. Get to it."

"Aye, sir!"

Bridge

"Well Mr. O'Brien. What are your thoughts?"

"I think we have our work cut out for us. I'm not sure where to even start, sir."

"Geordi has engineering well in hand. Tell me about weapons?"

"The lines are cut in a dozen different places. I can't even run a proper diagnostic without hitting an error."

"Mr. Crusher, Ms. Wildman. Work with Chief O'Brien on weapons."

"Sir!"

"Well Mr. Riker. What do you think?"

"I think you need to get your money back, Captain."

"That bad?"

"The helm controls are barely functional."

"And between you and Ms. Laren you should be able to fix it, correct?"

"We'll try sir."

"Good."

"Dr. Bashir, status of the infirmary?"

"There are too many things inoperable to give you a status report just yet sir."

"Data, perhaps you can assist the Doctor?"

"Sir."

Picard went where he was needed, helping here and there, and taking over duties in the small mess area since no one else had the time or the forethought to cook. At some point during the day, the computer beeped for his attention. Someone else was wanting to beam aboard. He met them in the small transporter room.

"Guinan."

"Jean-Luc. You left without saying good-bye."

"It was necessary."

"So is my coming here. You don't trust these Lanteans do you?"

"No. I know what their plans are, and I fully intend on doing my best to stop them."

"And so you're trying to fix up this ship?"

"Yes."

"And what are you doing, exactly?"

"Other than meeting you here? I'm playing chef in the small mess hall."

"Show me the way, then leave me to the cooking duties. You, sir, are needed elsewhere."

"Thank you, Guinan."

"Don't thank me yet, Captain."

**

* * *

Midway Station**

**Between the Milky Way and Pegasus Galaxies**

With the Federation ships safely back in their own galaxy, Midway cuts power to the cloaking generators that had screened the larger parts of the station from their initial view. The cloaks had not only allowed much of the station to disappear from site, but also to shift out of phase, allowing the _Everett Young_ to approach without difficulty. The ships of the Lantean Alliance task force approached the station for a brief respite before continuing their journey. One small grouping of ships would make the journey, to reinforce General Carter's own group, while the rest would remain here, awaiting the order to move in and lay claim to what was rightfully theirs.


	6. Chapter 5

A/N: I know I had promised 1 week intervals on this story and I want to apologize to everyone who's following it. Real life stepped in and had me running ragged for two full weeks. Rest assured, I'm back on schedule now. Chapter 5 explains a lot of things. Minor rewrite to Chapter 1...that add up to a few extra periods here and there. Too many run-on sentences for my tastes ;). Thanks and Enjoy! Texan

* * *

Chapter 5

Picard's Saber

Twelve persons did not a crew make, or something to that effect. It weighed heavily on his mind, but the truth was he did not know who else he could count on. Will Riker was Captain of his own ship now, and he could depend on him in a pinch. But who else? He'd heard that Beverly Crusher had turned down Starfleet Medical and had gotten command of a hospital ship, the _Curie_. But that wasn't a warship. Still, he'd send the two of them a message, asking them to meet him at DS-9.

His engineering staff had performed a minor miracle in cobbling together a warp core. O'Brien had used a contact to obtain some dilithium from a Ferengi trader he knew that happened to be passing through the area. It was enough to get them to DS-9, where another Ferengi trader that both O'Brien and Bashir knew of, could get them the other things they needed. Along they way, they would stop at a planet that Keller called Langara. Picard had never heard of such a world before, but since it wasn't too far off the path to DS-9, he consented.

The Langaran system wasn't a planetary system so much as it was populated with asteroids. Keller's eyes grew moist as he realized what must have happened. An out of control naquadria reaction. With no one from Earth to assist, and with war always looming overhead the Langaran populace, Keller could only guess as to the reason there was no planet here. But his own scans showed a few rocks that were almost pure naquadah, and some that were entirely naquadria. Picard had assigned him a work area that had been two of the former crew quarters combined into one. With the careful implementation of force fields, along with some very precise beaming done by Chief O'Brien, Keller soon had close to ten tons of the raw materials available to him.

Keller spent the next several hours refining the raw materials into weapons grade naquadah, and refined naquadria. With the naquadah in his possession, Keller proceeded to direct the Asgard resequencer to produce generators. Then he went out in search of the Chief Engineer.

"Commander La Forge. A moment of your time if I may."

"Alright."

"As I understand the power requirements of this ship, the Warp Core provides almost everything we need, but there are fusion powered plants that provide auxiliary power, yes?"

"Yes, that is correct. Why?"

"What I have here is a portable generator. Is there any way for you to measure the output?"

"Sure. Let me plug this in to our system. That's not possible."

"What's not possible, Commander?"

"What is the power source?"

"It's an element we call Naquadah. It a crystalline metal that acts as an extreme superconductor, able to collect and channel extreme amounts of energy. This particular unit is a Mk IX generator, with a power output of twenty-six thousand, five hundred and sixty-two-point-five terawatts. The current state of the art is a Mark X generation. Each new generation produces approximately five times the amount of power of the previous generation. But our ships are powered by what we call ZPMs, or Zero Point Modules."

"Don't suppose you have any of those?"

"No. But I can produce a few more of the generators, if you need them."

"What is the waste product?"

"None."

"Give me three more?"

"Sure thing. Now, who do I speak to about weapons?"

"Commander Laren is the tactical officer. She would be on the Bridge."

"Good. Thanks. I'll have the generators for you in a couple of hours."

Bridge

Keller walked in on a scene of some chaos. Wires and panels were strewn every which way, and there were at least five or six people on the floor underneath consoles of one type of another.

"Did I come at a bad time, Captain?"

"We're a little busy here, Mr. Keller. Is there something you wanted?"

"How are we fixed for weapons, Captain?"

"At the moment, we're not."

"What does this vessel normally have, as far as weapons?"

"One Type VIII phaser bank, four Type VII phaser arrays, and two Photon torpedo tubes."

"That means pretty much nothing to me, sir. Let's start with the torpedoes. Explosive type?"

"Matter and anti-matter."

"Approximate yield?"

"Maximum of twenty-five isotons."

"Isotons? How does that relate to Megatons?"

"Different scale."

"Ok, so I'm not sure how naquadah will affect the yield of a matter and antimatter device, but when applied to a nuclear device, it can increase the explosive yield by an order of magnitude. So, for the sake of example, let's say we start with twenty-give kilotons of explosive power. Apply the naquadah, and we get twenty-five megatons. Follow me?"

"Impressive. How much naquadah is required to do this?"

"About half a kilo, of weapons grade naquadah."

"I see. And how much do you have?"

"After producing a few power generators for Commander La Forge, I have about two tons left over."

"Two tons. Ok. We have no torpedoes aboard. Do you have any suggestions?"

"Yes. Captain Picard gave me access to your tactical database. The casing of the torpedo is pretty standard as are the electronics within to do what needs to be done. I can use a Drone warhead and your torpedo casing, and give you a device with a nominal yield of a hundred kilotons."

"Drone warhead?"

"Modified zero-point energy tap."

"Wouldn't a zero-point energy tap have a lot more energy to it?"

"Theoretically, its limitless. But for practical purposes, nominal yield is a hundred kilotons, with a max potential of one thousand megatons, scalable when you direct the weapon to fire."

"Can you build a few test weapons?"

"Certainly. Where do you normally keep the torpedoes?

"Torpedo room? Let me show you."

"Sure."

Later

Keller hadn't given them anything that would compromise his mission. The generator technology was older than he'd let on, and current state of the art was the ZPM. Naquadah generators were to be found on the smaller colonies, where all the major ones used ZPMs only. Even using just the Drone warhead wasn't a compromise f technology, as it technically was an Ancient weapon, that had been in use for at least a million years. Then again, Keller had given them only first generation tech when it came to the Drone warhead.

In the privacy of his room, he pulled out a small box, and opened it, revealing a rather unremarkable platform. From another section, he pulled a smooth stone. He placed the stone on the platform and found himself in another place.

**

* * *

**

Talus

**Communications Room**

"Sir?"

"Ah, Guard. Good. I need to see General O'Neill."

"And you are?"

"Michael Keller, 309th. Specialist Commander."

"Sir. This way sir."

Keller didn't know where he was, just that he was obviously aboard a ship. After a few minutes walk, to the nearest transporter room, and then to the Bridge, Keller still had no idea what ship he was on.

"General O'Neill."

"Commander Keller. Things are going well?"

"Yes sir. Contact has been made. I've given them Mk. IX naquadah generators and Mk. I drone tech. Captain Picard is headed for a station called Deep Space Nine where he will obtain some weapons and other items necessary to complete repairs. Then he wants to head to a planet he calls Cardassia Prime. The Breen have been there. Laid waste to a planet that had been bombed a quarter century ago. Death and devastation are extreme. An excellent location for us to begin helping."

"I agree. Give us the coordinates. We'll go there and cloak and wait for your arrival. Picard is amenable to further contact?

"Yes sir. He is exactly what we need, sir. He may not have the ear of the Admiralty sir, but he has the respect of the rank and file."

"Excellent. Good work, Mr. Keller. Go, before you're missed."

"Aye sir."

**

* * *

**

Sol System

**Earth**

There were a number of ships in the system; Federation, Klingon, and Lantean. Though General Carter, Fleet Commander, had effectively stated that his small task force could easily defeat the Breen, the Federation and its allies demanded to have a number of ships represent their interests. After hours of discussions, the Federation chose a dozen of their best and most heavily armed ships to join the Lantean fleet. The Klingon Empire, not to be outdone, contributed two dozen vessels; a dozen of their most heavily armed, and a dozen of their fastest escorts. Some ships were getting minor upgrades, courtesy of the Lantean Alliance, to sensors, and to their power generators.

But for the most part, the Lanteans were working with the other two governments in the fleet, learning their strengths and weaknesses, and showcasing some of their other technologies that had members of the Federation or Klingon crews drooling with desire to possess those technologies. Probes with multiple holographic projectors that could make an enemy see a larger fleet than was actually there. Not only see visually, but also on their scanners. Plasma based beams that were as powerful as Type XII phasers, yet took up half the space aboard a vessel. Ion cannons fitted for duty as interceptors, allowing the Lantean ships to put up not only a force-field, but also to intercept incoming weapons fire. But it was the Drone weapons that they coveted the most. Less than half the length of a photon torpedo, and perhaps a tenth of the mass, yet faster, and able to easily slip through most known shields, with an explosive output that would have been five quantum torpedoes exploding at once. Jonathon Carter, General and overall fleet commander for the Lantean fleet, suggested at least one to two weeks of workups for the various segments of the fleet, allowing time for the upgrades to be completed, and for the various crews to mesh into a more coherent whole.

The Federation and the Klingons really didn't depend on the use of fighter craft. The Lanteans used them religiously. That wasn't to say that the Federation or their Klingon allies didn't have fighters, just that they didn't rely on them as much. But because the Lanteans did use them, a small number of fighters had been assigned to the fleet. Ten aboard each Sovereign class, six on the Intrepid class ships, and 4 in each Akira class. Fifty six fighters for the Federation. None for the Klingon Empire. Compared to six hundred and seventy-eight for the Lantean ships. Even their Supply and Dock class ships carried fighters for localized defense of those ships.

**

* * *

**

Deep Space Nine

**Picard's Saber**

The Saber had docked, and most of the crew had gone aboard. A few had gone for the simple pleasures the station offered, but most had gone in search of one contact or another, trying to obtain the necessary items for their ship. Commander Ro had gone in search of contacts on Bajor. Riker, promoted to Commander by Picard, had gone in search of a few former Maquis comrades. O'Brien and Bashir had gone to find Quark.

Quark's was a bar on the station. It overlooked the Promenade and was on the second floor. It was perhaps the most well known bar in that sector, and whether it was because of the Dabo Girls and their gaming tables, or the fair priced drinks, or even the first rate holosuites available for hire, it all paled in comparison to what the right amount of gold-pressed latinum could buy through Quark's contacts. For a minor fee, of course!

"Dr. Bashir! Chief O'Brien! I know, you've come back because you missed me! Am I right?"

"That too, Quark. Is there someplace we could talk a little more privately?"

"Step over here. Now, how can I help you two fine clients?"

"We have a list of some items we need. How much, and how fast can you get them?"

"Let me see the list. Medical supplies. No problems there. Duranium plating. Have that in my cargo bay. Type VIII phasers? Type VII phaser arrays? Photon torpedoes? Going someplace dangerous?"

"You heard about Cardassia Prime?"

"Yes. Yes I did."

"We're going after the ones that did that. Cardassians may have been the scum of the universe, but even they didn't deserve what happened to them."

"And Garak?"

"Still on Cardassia, the last time we saw him. Trying to rebuild after that last Breen attack."

"I don't have any of the Type 8 or Type 7 phasers. I do have some high power Ferengi units, with a maximum output of twenty thousand terawatts. Will those do?"

"I'm sure I can adapt them."

"Photon torpedoes are hard to come by these days. Especially since the Federation is tending to use more of those quantum torpedoes instead. I do have a spare pair of launchers on my ship, complete with a full compliment of torpedoes."

"And what about those last two items?"

"Dilithium is easy enough. A warp core, or two warp cores, is a bit harder. Still, I might have something you would be interested in. After the war, I managed to get my hands on some surplus Jem'Hadar Attack ships. Mostly in pieces really, but there are warp cores on them. Nothing is guaranteed."

"I'd like to examine them, before I make an offer."

"Of course! Anything for an old friend!"

"Do you know the power ratings?"

"Normal cruise speed of Warp 7. Maximum cruise of Warp 9. Maximum output of Warp 9.6 for twelve hours."

"How many ships do you have, Quark?"

"I bought six of them, sight unseen. I thought perhaps I could refit them, but there simply isn't enough cargo space aboard those things!"

"Where have you got six of those stashed away?"

"Under a holographic screen on Jeraddo. I could show you where, if you have access to a Runabout?"

"I'm sure I could arrange something."

**Jeraddo**

**(Lunar V)**

Jeraddo was the fifth moon of the five moons of Bajor. Even though it was a moon, it was classified as Class M, but the only inhabitants had been there during the Cardassian occupation of Bajor, and they had long ago been removed. The Saber remained near the station, and the concerned parties took a Type 11 shuttle to Jeraddo. Quark had no idea, of course, who the other passengers were, just that the blonde human woman was most definitely an exquisite example of the human female species. Such a shame, he thought, that they insisted on wearing clothes. He directed them where to land, and as they existed the shuttle, he pressed a few controls on a remote unit he carried and the holographic screen opened just enough to show a doorway.

Where O'Brien had expected the ships to be parked out in the open, in reality they were parked in what the 20th century humans would have referred to as a hangar. The door in the holographic screen also happened to be the normal sized door in the side of the hangar, next to the massive doors at the center. Quark walked through first, running his hand along a panel near the door, to activate the overhead lights. There were six Jem'Hadar attack ships, parked side by side, on their struts. Julian stayed near Quark, talking with him and catching up on station gossip, while O'Brien, La Forge, Hansen, and Brunali examined the ships in detail, each of them looking at specific items, judging for themselves the workability of the various components. In the end, it was O'Brien who got sent back to negotiate a final price with the Ferengi.

"Find anything useful, Chief?"

"A few things. We've marked the pieces we'd like to buy or trade for."

"Hmm. Yes. I see. Four warp cores?"

"The remaining two aren't at all serviceable, and our engineer believes he can make at most two working cores of the four we are interested in."

"Ah. Yes. Good. Several Polaron emitter arrays, quite a lot of hull plating here. Essentially you are buying four ships. So let's say all four ships, in their entirety. That way, there'll be no scraps to discard of."

"That sounds reasonably fair. And the other items we discussed?"

"Federation medical supplies I have aboard my ship, and I can transfer them to you easily enough. I have arrangements with farmers on Bajor, so I can easily give you what you need in those terms. All in all, five kilograms of liquid latinum."

"Five? That's highway robbery!"

"Call it what you will, Chief. Finding weapons like those on such short notice will certainly increase the price with any other Ferengi."

"Four."

"Six."

"Fine. Five it is. Half now, half when you've delivered everything to us. We'll remain here to take the parts we need."

"You drive a hard bargain, Chief."

"Quark. If you can get the remaining items here, in say, twelve hours, we'll give you an extra kilogram."

"Done!"

The truth was that Chief O'Brien had far more latinum available to him. Among the items beamed aboard from the Langaran asteroid belt, had been liquid latinum. Keller had gotten what he needed, and in the resulting scans, he'd asked the Chief about some mineral traces. One of those had been the latinum, and the chief had beamed aboard thirty kilograms of the liquid metal. The Chief, and the others, pulled up their shirt sleeves and got to work. Picard, and the others aboard the ship had taken up a geo-stationary orbit over the hangar, and even Keller got pressed into vacuum suit duty outside the small ship. He might not have been able to do any of the interface work, but he could certainly move things around in orbit, and they used him as the equivalent of a cargo mover, pulling things here and there, for the Starfleet crew to do what was necessary.

Eleven hours later, when Quark showed up in orbit with the remaining supplies, they had managed to not only install the Ferengi launchers in place of the missing Federation launchers, but they had also added the four Mk. I dominion style torpedo tubes to the ship; two at the rear and the other two alongside the larger main launchers. It gave them additional offensive capabilities. Quark transferred the cargo to the smaller ship, and then received his payment. The final two and a half kilograms of latinum, plus an added kilo for completing the order in less than twelve hours. With the ships now completely in orbit, Quark closed down his facility on Jeraddo, and returned to the station.

Twenty-eight hours later, having performed several minor miracles, and a few major ones, the Saber departed orbit headed for Cardassia. In addition to the six torpedo launchers, the ship now sported six high power Ferengi phaser emitters, and twelve Jem'Hadar phased Polaron emitters. None of them were arrays, but they were placed so as to give maximum coverage. Keller constructed several Mk. IIX generators to power each of the beam emitters, one per emitter, so as not to depend on the warp core for power for their weapons.

The engineering team had also pulled a rabbit out of their collective hats and had taken the four partial warp cores, built two fully operational ones, and installed them, horizontally, into the engineering spaces of the Saber. Each unit could deliver a maximum output of Warp 7, and combined, the ship would now travel at Warp 9.9 for short durations. But Picard was content with Warp7. The second warp core was used to power the structural integrity fields, and the main shields, exclusively. With everything as field tested as possible, the ship turn about away from Jeraddo, and set course for Cardassia Prime, at Warp 6.

**Cardassia Prime**

_Talus_ was in the system, and cloaked. The damage to the planet below was incredible, and the sensors aboard the ship told the tale all too well. Without help, those on the planet would be dead inside of six months. An entire species, eradicated, because the Alliance had failed to round up all of the Ori debris, four centuries ago. Well, not on their watch. As soon as Keller arrived, O'Neill would speak to Picard about acting as their intermediary, and offer to evacuate the planet while they deployed the Gadmeer terraforming ship.

Centuries ago, the legendary SG-1 had met the Gadmeer. They had been a species that had developed a vessel capable of terraforming an entire world in only days. SG-1 had negotiated with them on behalf of the Enkarans. Afterwards, the had exchanged technology bases, and SG-1 had come away with the science needed to build their own terraforming ships, while the Gadmeer had gotten city sized shields, naquadah power generation, and an introduction to the Asgard out of the arrangement. What that meant now, was if they could answer specific environmental questions, they could program the ship to re-make Cardassia Prime. Once started, it couldn't be stopped, but when completed, the Cardassians would have a new world to call their own.

**

* * *

**

Romulan System

The Breen had arrived in the system only moments ago, and had discovered that their enemy was no more. It appeared as though the Romulan sun had gone supernova, and had destroyed Romulus in the process. The universe had done what the Breen had intended, and it was no great loss to their plan, and a delay of mere hours for the remainder of their list. The Breen task force turned about and set course for the Bajoran wormhole to travel to the Gamma quadrant. They had a visit to make, to the Founder's Homeworld, and a lesson to dole out.

**

* * *

**

Sol System

**Combined Fleet**

The upgrades to the other ships were done, but they had not departed on their mission as yet. Things were beginning to fall into place. The fleet was conducting exercises, and the Lantean fighter squadrons were conducting dissimilar maneuvers against their Federation counterparts. What better way to learn the relative strengths and weaknesses of an ally than to fight against the in mock combat? The small and nimble Lantean fighters quickly proved their worth in the mock combat, breezing through the Federation fighters and then swarm attacking the smaller Federation escorts. And while they were doing just that, the Federation reserve fighters had gone to warp for a brief instant and had come out of it, just shy of the Lantean carriers, well within the range of the interceptors that were firing plasma bursts with an ever increasing pace. The phaser fire, even pulsed, was ineffectual against the volume of interceptor fire. The rapid fire micro photons, however, scored multiple hits against critical targets. The lesson had been learned, and learned well, by the Lantean Alliance. The Lantean ships would not underestimate the Federation fighters again.

Cardassia Prime

Keller was on the Bridge when the Saber finally arrived in orbit over Cardassia Prime. The Captain ordered the view screen activated, and the crew on the Bridge began talking in hushed whispers. The devastation was startling. It took a moment to sink that this was the fate that awaited Earth. Keller took one look at his radio, worn on the strap that was his suspenders, and saw that the light was active. He reached for the radio even as Picard turned to look at him.

"Sir. We're here."

"Mr. Keller, to whom are you speaking?"

"To my Commanding Officer, Captain."

"Sir! Vessel de-cloaking off the starboard bow!"

"On screen!"

And there it was. Fortress class. The rumors Keller had heard did not do justice to the descriptions. Like the Daedalus class of old, without the tower at the rear, with the hangar pods set at mid-ships, and an angular bow. Bristling with weapons, it stood alone, like a beacon in the night sky. A fortress daring all to attack her and to tempt their own fate. The video screen kicked on, and Picard was surprised to see Colonel Ronon O'Neill again.

"About time you showed up, Commander Keller. We were starting to get a little worried here."

"They don't use Hyperspace, sir. Makes travel time seem impossibly long."

"True. Surprised to see me, Captain Picard?"

"Very. I was under the impression you were warming a cell on Lantea, Colonel O'Neill."

"Rumors of my imprisonment have been greatly exaggerated. It's General O'Neill."

"I see. You are Mr. Keller's contact?"

"We are."

"I see. Are we meeting here for a purpose?"

"Yes. We need you to intercede on our behalf. The Cardassians don't know us. But they do know the Federation. We need the planet evacuated completely. Can you arrange that?"

"Possibly. If you tell me why."

"We have at our disposal a technology to completely terraform a world, in a matter of a few days, possibly as long as a few weeks. We can recreate the world below us, into something not as bad. Perhaps not an Earth class world, but something along those lines. Certainly it will be better for the inhabitants below."

"Very well. It will take us sometime to arrange for their evacuation. The nearest habitable world is Bajor, and they don't care much for the Cardassians."

"What about the moon orbiting this world?"

"It would take longer to establish facilities there, as the surface is in vacuum."

"Leave that to me, Picard."

Talus

Command Deck

"Mr. Rakai."

"Sir?"

"You heard the man. We need facilities on that moon. You're in charge of that project XO. Use whatever you need."

"Sir!"

Keller was still on the Bridge of the Saber, and Picard began asking him about the various ships departing from the larger ship in orbit.

"Those four would be Satedan Freighters. Looks like they're fully loaded too. The small cylindrical ones with the flat bottoms? Those are Shuttles, what we call Jumpers. Each one can carry about ten to fifteen troopers to a planet."

"And what are those beams, the ship is using?"

"Look like Asgard beams. They are usually used to deconstruct something, but they can be used to construct as well. Can you pull up an image of where ever they're impacting?"

"Make it so."

"Yeah. Construction beams. One set of beams are picking up raw materials in the form of those boulders and clearing out what look like foundations for buildings, while the second set start forming different types of construction materiel. Yeah, see that's what the Jumpers are for. They're taking a construction unit down to the surface."

"How long to build a facility?"

"Depends on what the General wants, in terms of space and stuff. At least four or five days. Maybe less."

"Mr. Data, you have the Bridge. I'll be in my Ready Room."

"Aye sir."

Picard needed help and there were few people he implicitly trusted. He sent out two sub-space missives and got responses back in short order. _Titan_ was in the Badlands, on patrol. _Olympic_ was a few sectors over, on a humanitarian mission. Both could be at Cardassia within twelve hours.

**

* * *

**

Sol System

The combined fleet was ready. Days of drill and practice combat had paid off. The ships of the fleet were fast, but they would move at the pace of the slowest ship. Their first stop would be Cardassia Prime, which the Federation had finally learned of the attack there. But at the speed of the slowest ship, Warp 5.5, it meant a journey of close to ten days.

Two days out from Sol, word came of a new Breen task force that had entered the Sol and attacking Luna. The Federation and Klingon ships wouldn't make it back in time, but the Lantean ships could be there in minutes. The fleet dropped out of warp, and the Lantean component jumped into hyperspace for the short jaunt back to Sol. By the time they arrived, however, the Breen had moved on to attacking Mars; loss of life on Luna was extreme. The Lantean ships made quick work of the two Breen raiders that had been in the system. With the consent of Earth and Star Fleet Command, General Carter left two Auroras and an Alamo class in the Sol system to assist the Federation with damage control, and to seed the inner planets with Orbital Denial satellites. With each satellite having the power of an Aurora cruiser, Earth could rest a little easier.

When the remainder of the Lantean ships rejoined the Federation and Klingon fleet, their immediate orders had changed, and the fleet set course for Qo'noS, the Klingon homeworld, to seed the Orbital Denial satellites around their core worlds, which would stop a Breen attack before it happened. In Sol, the damage had been done. The death toll on Luna and Mars was still climbing, but at first blush, it had been horrendous. Not since the Xindi attack of 2153 had so many people died in so short a time. Over eighteen million dead on Luna alone, and early reports from Mars indicated close to twelve million dead before the Lantean ships eliminated the Breen raiders.

Cardassia Prime

The emergency facilities were strictly utilitarian. But they were sufficient to the task. The Federation starships _Titan_ and _Olympic_ had arrived, and had commenced operations. The hospital ship had begun beaming up Cardassians to the various infirmaries aboard the ship, with the _Titan_ and the Saber assisting where they could, while the _Talus_ had used every one of her transports, Jumpers and Freighters alike, to load the uninjured and transport them to the temporary facilities on the Cardassian moon. The Cardassian death toll during the Dominion-Federation War, from soldiers and from Cardassia Prime, had been over eight hundred million. Thus far, the number of dead from this attack was already twice that and still rising.

In orbit, crewmen from the Talus were constructing a Gadmeer Terraforming ship. The technology was old when SG-1 encountered it, and in four intervening centuries, it hadn't changed at all. As soon as the last Cardassian was off the planet and either on one of the ships, or on their moon, Talus released the GT ship to do its work. While it worked to transform the planet, General O'Neill received an invitation to meet with Captain Picard, and representatives of the Cardassian people.

Picard's Saber

The conference room, was small and it served many purposes on the small Saber class vessel. At mealtimes, it was the mess hall, and some nights it was an entertainment center. For the moment, however, it would serve as a meeting room for the various groups in the system. There were two Cardassians in the room, and plenty of representatives of the Federation, and only Keller and O'Neill of Sateda.

What it had come down to, was that O'Neill no longer felt comfortable in calling himself a member of the Lantean Alliance. Their policies had fallen out of favor on Sateda almost since the beginning, but it was to Sateda's advantage to be a part of the alliance. Still, the ages old animosity between the ruling elite on Lantea, and the old guard of the SGC had led to a continual distrust of Lantean edicts. The time was almost right to usurp the status quo. Ships like the Talus, and others of her ilk were the first new designs to be built in over two centuries. Against the Federation and other powers like it, pretty much anything in Pegasus was more than a match. Against the bogeymen that the Federation spoke of? Who knew. The Federation was ill equipped to deal with the Ori. Even more so against an enemy that had none of the Ori belief systems, and all of their weapons. The Breen were not seen as religious fanatics. Just fanatics in general.

"General O'Neill. What is the status and estimated time of completion for the terraforming procedure?"

"Everything proceeds apace, Picard. ETC is still at nine days."

"What will we have at the end of nine days?"

"What you will have, Cardassian, is a lush green world, ready for intensive agricultural production. No pollution. Clean water. What you will not have are those things you exhausted years before; precious ores and minerals. The Gadmeer system can do many things; it can clean the air, the soil, and the water. But it can not replace the minerals and ores you've already extracted."

Nine days later, the Cardassians moved back onto their re-made world, _Titan_ and _Olympic _returned to their patrol sectors, and Picard's Saber docked with the _Talus_ for the jump to the area of space ruled over by the Dominion.

**

* * *

**

Dominion Space

**Homeworld of the Founders**

Once, there was a time that the changeling species known as the Founders, had ruled their empire, the Dominion, with an iron fist. They could be anything they wanted, and they wanted those they referred to as Solids to be their slaves. They had sent out some of their own to live amongst the Solids. Only one had returned. He called himself Odo, and while he considered himself male, true Changelings were both sexes at once. Odo had imprinted, for lack of a better term, on the male scientist that had had found him. Odo had spent years, decades perhaps, living and working amongst the Solids, and had, after the end of the Federation Dominion War, returned to the Great Link and immersed himself amongst the others of his kind, sharing with them all that he had learned.

Odo had finally convinced the others of the idea that not all Solids were bad. And then the Breen came. One time allies to the Founders, the Breen were now the most powerful race in the galaxy. Where their beams touched, Changelings died. On a planet where it could be said that the Founders were the all of the planet, the Breen destroyed almost all of them. Those who survived, were mere shadows of what they once had been. The Breen moved on, to the other major worlds of the Dominion. By the time they reached the Jem'Hadar, their enemy had mobilized a fleet to stop the Breen.

**Picard's Saber**

Picard didn't have to like it, but he had to face the facts as he knew them. The Saber at his command might be fast, but the _Talus_ was faster. He grudgingly admitted that. What he didn't like, however, was the increase of his crew. Cardassians that felt indebted to him. A life debt, O'Neill had termed it. Picard had saved them from certain death, he'd even given them a new Cardassia Prime, and they felt like they owed him. Not only had they rushed in droves to volunteer, but the Cardassians had given him something he still had problems believing in; a small fleet to command. The ships were small, true, but they were ships, and it meant that he didn't have to face the Breen alone.

_Titan_ and _Olympic_ had returned to their patrol sectors, but they had given him what they could spare in terms of spare parts, and weapons. His Saber was at full capacity now, in terms of crew and equipment, and he had a trio of Cardassian Hideki class ships as his escorts. That all of his small flotilla of ships were now docked aboard the Talus as it raced to the next stop, the homeworld of the Founders, meant that his own crew could integrate the new equipment and make nay repairs that had been neglected until now. And it meant that he could finally have a one on one chat with O'Neill.

**O'Neill's Quarters**

**Both stared out at one another, each taking the measure of the other. O'Neill poured two glasses of Satedan Kobe Wine, which was not unlike the wines Picard knew of. He'd just never seen such a color on wine. White, red, even blush he'd seen. But this blend of green and orange was something altogether unexpected. Especially since try as he might, and even though he suspected their were minor differences, he couldn't see the major difference between this Satedan wine and anything from his family's own vineyard. The Satedan was at the same time, sweeter and more acidic than anything he was used to. It didn't so much as go down his throat as it evaporated on his tongue, leaving him to inhale something all at once exotic and mundane.**

"Careful with the wine, Picard. It has been known to sneak up on one. Just like most Satedans."

"I shall endeavor to remember that. Now if you're quite done with the theatrics, I want the truth."

"But can you handle the truth? That's the real question isn't it? Are you loyal enough to Earth and your Federation to do the right thing in this situation?"

"And what would be the right thing, then?"

"That, my dear Captain, is entirely up to you and your conscious. I can't answer that for you , as much as I would like to."

"Why?"

"There are more things at stake here, than what you imagine."

"The begining at the beginning."

"Very well. I'm not going to challenge your knowledge of Earth history, because what you know and what you think you know are irrelevant. What I know is irrelevant. I wasn't there, so I have no right to judge what was done.

Since the beginning of the Stargate Program, there had been plans in place, for various contingencies. I doubt anyone could have imagined some of the scenarios that took place in those hours after the nuclear exchange. It was two plans from the very early days of the Cold War that no one could see ever happening at the same time. Drop Shot and Hen House. But there had been a contingency plan in place, and Woolsey, the commander of the Atlantis mission at the time, knowing he was the only surviving member of the IOA, activated one of their plans. Not a US plan, not a UK plan, but an IOA plan. Exodus Four. The systematic retrieval of certain IOA and military personnel from their bunkers. O'Neill might have executed the plan, but he had no way of knowing that what he was doing was condemning a lot of survivors to a bleak existence.

The IOA had things rigged from the beginning. As soon as certain events happened, their programming took over. O'Neill didn't try to rescue any survivors on the surface, because the re-programmed sensor pods on the IOA built ships would have shown a lethal blanket of radiation over everything. He thought he couldn't. He trusted the sensors, and those sensors told him everyone on the surface was dead."

"But why?"

"The IOA knew something was coming. How they knew even we don't know, but they knew. They had their fingers in so many pies in so many governments that they just knew. Like they knew about the Eugenics war before it happened. Or about Colonel Greene, before he became a major player. The IOA might have seemed like a noble political body watching over the Stargate, Atlantis, and Icarus projects, but in reality, they were just as corrupt as any other major power of that time; perhaps of all time. The men and women on the front lines, they fought the enemy. The Goa'uld, the Ori, The Lucian Alliance. Did you know Picard, that the Lucian Alliance still exists?"

"I've never heard of this alliance."

"They go by a different name these days. Still just as ruthless as they were back then. The Orion Syndicate, I believe is the name. Once upon a time, when they were still the LA, they were allied with Earth against the Ori. An alliance of convenience, and when the war was done, they went right back to their criminal ways."

"I can't imagine the Orion Syndicates doing anything to help Earth."

"What was the alternative? Watching the galaxy burn as some religious fanatics cut down everyone who stood against them? No. They allied with Earth because there was a commonality to the mission. Earth wanted the Ori gone, so they could continue to explore and expand. And the Lucians wanted the Ori gone so they'd have customers. They both wanted the Ori gone, and that was enough to form an alliance against the Ori. Greed. At its most basic level. As someone once said of political bedfellows, when one pulls back the blanket and turns on the light, one could find some very interesting people doing some very unorthodox things."

"What does all this have to do with what Commander Keller told me about?"

"Everything, Picard. It has everything to do with what Keller told you. He did, I believe, mention the Freeborn and the Highborn?"

"Freeborn are children born the natural way. Highborn are genetically engineered."

"Yes. Genetically engineered to IOA standards. You saw the Atlantis citadel. What did you think of it?"

"A very symmetrical city. Very clean. No pollution. Transporters used to the maximum effectiveness."

"Did you see underneath the city, by any chance? Or the power generation room?"

"No. Why would those interest me?"

"Did you know that the city can deploy a shield to protect itself?"

"Most cities in the Federation can do that."

"Did you know that with just three Zero Point Modules, the city becomes a spaceship, able to cross the void between galaxies just as easily as it does between planets?"

"The city is a ship?"

"Indeed."

"What good does that information do me?"

"I'm going to show you a video transmission. It's from a deep cover operative at the Midway Station."

Picard watched as O'Neill loaded the crystal into the slot on his desk, and then watched as a holographic projector lit up the room. There was no sound, but it wasn't necessary. The image showed hundreds of ships. O'Neill provided the voice over.

"Alamo class troop transports. Aurora class attack cruisers. Essex class fleet carriers. Admiral class heavy battle cruisers. Victory class dreadnoughts. Invincible class battleships. Those will be the lead ships for the invasion. Behind them, those are the ones you need to worry about. Citadel class ships. Each with a command crew, gunnery crew, and fifty thousand genetically engineered humans to act as your new lords and masters."

"We have to stop them!"

"No. I have to stop them. The Coalition of Free Worlds in Pegasus laid down once before the might of Lantea. Not again. You could amass a fleet of a thousand ships, and still you wouldn't be able to harm half of them. The most pressing concern, of course, is your problem with the Breen. Lantea had been waiting for such an opportunity, and the Breen are the perfect one at the moment. The Breen will weaken you and eventually you might fight them to a standstill. Lantea is waiting for that to swoop in and help out their old home world. I put a slight kink in their plans by spilling my guts, as it were, to Admiral Janeway. But it doesn't matter in the long term. Their plan, more than likely, is to assist the coalition fleet with defeating the Breen, and then to turn on you when you least expect it."

"I can not allow this to happen."

"The question is Picard, how many people can you trust? I mean trust with your life? Because if your Federation gets wind of what you are doing, then it will all be for naught. They'll tell Lantea, and the plans that Sateda and the other Free Worlds have worked on for centuries will come to nothing. The fate of several galaxies, unfortunately, rests with who you can trust with your life, Picard. I hate that it has come to this, but it is what it is."

"Better the devil you know, than one you don't."

"Excuse me?"

"There are few I would trust with my life. Most are already aboard my ship. The only Devil I know is the Borg. I wonder what the Borg would say to the possibility of acquiring a technology that allows them to traverse entire galaxies?"

"If they're as technology hungry as the Replicators my ancestors knew, then I'd say they'd want that technology desperately."

"These are the last coordinates I know of for a Borg nexus. Can you take us there?"

"I can. Are you sure there is no one else?"

"There was. His loyalty is to the Klingon Empire. But he was once my tactical officer."

"Perhaps we should at least warn him?"

"Perhaps."

Several hours later

Picard was meeting with Worf, who had broken speed records to come to the aid of his former Captain. O'Neill was reading up on the Borg, and everything he'd read so far screamed 'Replicator' to him. He knew that several human form Replicators, more commonly known as Asurans, had never been accounted for. The idea of Borg perfection and the Asurans; it seemed like a marriage made in heaven, but O'Neill was unsure. Then he realized that two of Picard's crew were former Borg, and he asked for a meeting.

"General O'Neill. You wished to see us?"

"Commander Hansen. Ensign Brunali. Yes, come in. I wish to ask a few things about the Borg, if I may?"

"Yes?"

"Are there any samples of Borg technology?"

"It would not take long to create one. Why?"

"Have you ever heard of a species called the Asurans?"

"No."

"Here is the information I have on them. Tell me what you believe the Borg would do to gain knowledge of these Asurans?"

The two sat for a moment and read the report. Both still had optical scanners in place that allowed them to read vast amounts of information in short order. What they read disturbed them a great deal. Brunali again deferred to his superior officer. As a Commander in the Federation, she was superior in rank to his Ensign status. As the former Tertiary Adjunct of a Unimatrix, she had been his superior in the Borg chain of command. Her information was more up to date than his was in any case.

"These Asurans were as close to perfection as the Borg have ever seen or come close to. Biological constructs made entirely from the mechanical. I had not thought such a thing possible. Do examples of their technology exist?"

"The Asurans were created, specifically, to fight the Wraith. They exceeded their programming, and shut off the desire to fight. It led to the downfall of the Ancients, or the Altairans. Depends on which history you subscribe to. Still, almost everything you see on this ship, is a by-product of Ancient technology. Now, the reason I asked for a sample of Borg tech was to test if this anti-Asuran weapon would work. The weapon works by disrupting the keron bond between the mechanical 'cells' that make up an Asuran."

Hansen turned to a stand-alone computer pad, and allowed her Borg nanotubes to come out and inject the pad. The pad started transforming itself into something that would be more Borg-like. O'Neill watched, fascinated, as the transformation took place. Then he pulled the trigger on the Keron disruptor, and the pad ceased its transformation. Hansen scanned it with a tri-corder, and pronounced it inert. Completely and entirely inert. Then she warned him.

"Your weapon is most effective. However, the Borg are known to adapt quickly to things that can do them harm. At most, your weapon would be effective for ten bursts. At worst, only two or three bursts. The more damaging a weapon is, the quicker the Borg work to adapt to it."

"I see. And that would be a problem, if we had never encountered an adaptable species before. But the Asurans were masters of adaptation, and so all of the keron disruptors have frequency modulators built in."

"Then it would be a most effective weapon against the Borg. Now, why did you want to know about the Borg?"

"Because your Captain seems to feel that he can appeal to the Borg to join his little cabal of patriots to defend the Federation. He feels that by showing the Borg the possibilities that the Lantean Alliance presents in terms of technology, that he can weaken their resolve to forcibly annex this galaxy. What he doesn't realize, is that with this keron disruptor tech, the Lantean Alliance will run right over the Borg, and if they discover that the Borg were sent against them by the Federation or one of its officers, then I'm afraid of the consequences, for they will be most dire indeed."


	7. Chapter 6

A/N: Having some major writer's block issues...I firmly believe my muse got washed away in the flood a couple weeks ago. (google: Laredo, Texas and flood...you'll see what I mean) I try if I can find me another muse (cause I think the last one drowned...)

Chapter 6

**Dominion Space**

**System of the Founders**

Talus was cloaked as she approached the homeworld of the Founders, and with good reason. There were hundreds of ships in this system. Ships that Picard identified as Jem'Hadar. Sensor scans of the planet told the reason. The Breen had been here. The planet below, had been the home world of the Founders; the shape-shifters that had made war on the solid species of the galaxy. And they had paid for it with the decimation of their species at the hands of the Federation. The weapons that Picard detested had been used on the Founders. Bio-warfare. It was something abhorrent in any century. Even Picard's desire to use the Borg against Lantea was some form of bio-warfare. If even one Lantean fell prey to the assimilation nanites of the Borg, the entire Alliance would be in danger. If the Borg learned of even a few of the secrets of inter-galactic travel, then everything that both the Alliance and the Coalition had worked for would be in danger. Sobering thoughts indeed.

"Weps, are you ready?"

"Ready sir."

"Launch."

A cloaked probe was ejected from the Talus, and it immediately opened a micro sized tear into hyperspace and disappeared. Since they knew not to look for that type of energy, the micro-tear into hyperspace went unnoticed by the Dominion ships. A short while later, reconfigured into a slightly larger vessel, the probe emerged from a much larger hyperspace event horizon and began broadcasting friendship messages on all known sub-space channels. The probe continued to broadcast the message even as the Jem'Hadar ships moved to intercept it. As Polaron beams bracketed the small ship, it continued to broadcast it's message and request. The Polaron beams fell silent as a Vorta, the designated spokes-species of the Dominion, answered the call. A few tense seconds later, Talus herself de-cloaked in the midst of the Jem'Hadar fleet.

"Very bold, Human. We have you completely surrounded. Should I give the word, every ship will open fire."

"Give it or not. It is you who will die. I only have a few questions to ask, and then I will leave."

"Very well. Ask."

"Was it the Breen who attacked you?"

"It was."

"Are there any survivors?"

"Some."

"Is there any assistance we can offer?"

"No."

"Very well."

"As you have asked these questions, so to do I have questions for you."

"I see. Ask. I may even answer."

"How do you know it was the Breen?"

"We have been tracking them. They have attacked several other worlds."

"Who has been attacked?"

"Earth. Cardassia Prime. Among others."

"I see. Yes. It is what we would do, had we wished to claim the galaxy as ours."

"They will not succeed. We have come here, to this place, and to this galaxy, to show the Breen the error of their ways."

"This galaxy? Then you are not of the Federation?"

"No."

"If it is true, that you wish to show the Breen the error of their ways, then we may be able to help one another."

"I'm listening."

"I wish to come aboard. Myself, and a small contingent of Jem'Hadar soldiers loyal to the Dominion."

"We could be gone a long time from here. I am told the Jem'Hadar require a particular fluid to survive."

"You are well informed. Be at ease. I will ensure that we have enough for a long journey."

"One more thing. Do you know the location of the Breen homeworld?"

"I do. I will trade that information for allowing us to come aboard. I wish to bear witness to the destruction of the Breen."

"Deal. Let us know when you are ready, and I will bring you aboard."

"We are ready."

"Very well. Standby for transport."

A short while later

"XO. We have new coordinates. Best speed, if you please, and transmit the signal."

"Aye sir."

Ten minutes later

"Sir?"

"XO?"

"One of the navigators brought this to my attention, sir."

"What?"

"They matched the coordinates the Dominion rep gave us to a planet from the Abydos Cartouche."

"And?"

"See for yourself, sir."

"No. Oh come on. You've got to be shitting me!"

"Frankly sir, I wish I was."

**

* * *

**

Dark Clouds Sector

**Pegasus Galaxy**

Three more ships were ready, and they would form the cores of two battle groups. One, centered around the Talus, the other around her sister ship, the _Glacis_. _Glacis_ was ready, as was her shield ship, _Pavise_. The shield ship for _Talus_, _Mantlet_, was also ready for deployment. While both _Talus_ and _Glacis_ were the height of technology for the Coalition of Planets, the _Pavise_ and the _Mantlet_ were the insurances that the two Fortress class ships would survive any encounter. They were Shield class ships, and their primary mission was to assist the Fortress they were assigned to. The Shield ships were shaped like a spear point, with pair of triangular sections at the stern on either side of a central cylindrical section that housed engines as well as a landing bay. Launch bays were dotted throughout the surface of the hull, and the ship could launch her entire fighter compliment in seconds. The fighters were strictly designed as interceptors, and they sported extra engines and an ability not seen in fighter craft since before the Atomic War on Earth; after-burners. With pulsed ion cannons in the nose, and a pair of internal launch bays for missiles, the fighters were but one aspect of the Shield system. The guns were another aspect. Lines of anti-fighter turrets down each major axis of the ship, with anti-ship turrets behind them. Pulsed ion cannons for the lighter duty against fighters, and Ori beams for everything else. The Breen weren't the only ones to reverse engineer that particular weapons system. But where the Breen didn't have a power source capable of providing the necessary energy for the beam, the Satedans did; ZPMs. Fighters for one aspect of the shield and energy weapons for a second aspect, leaving a third aspect that would come as a surprise to any ship fighting a Fortress.

The Shield class ships were designed to protect the Fortress class against anything the Lantean Alliance had in their fleet. Against the fleets of the Milky Way, it was anyone's guess. Still, the fleets were now assembled, and the traveled as a unit to where _Talus_ lay waiting for them, just outside of Breen space, in a nebula so dark as to be almost black. When the fleets arrived, they signaled to _Talus_ before disengaging their cloak fields. Picard was on the bridge for that show along with the Vorta and his Jem'Hadar escort.

The ships of the fleet rippled into existence, as their cloaks dropped and their shields rose. Two. Ten. Thirty. Fifty-nine ships in all. _Glacis_ and her fleet of escorts, frigates, and destroyers, for one fleet of thirty vessels. The remaining ships formed up alongside _Talus_. The Fortress class ship served as the flag ship, and as one of four carriers in the fleet; The others being two Knight class Escort carriers, and a Shield class Escort Cruiser. There were also Heavy Cruisers, Missile Destroyers, and Troop Landers as the bulk part of the fleet, with twenty of the older Daedalus class ships refitted as light cruisers, rounding out the fleet. _Talus_ and her fleet blinked their running lights on and off, several times, to wish the _Glacis_ and her fleet luck on their journey.

**

* * *

**

Qo'noS

**Home world of the Klingon Empire**

The Breen had not attacked here, and this was a good thing. Worf had gone to the aid of his former Captain, but had returned a Klingon with a heavy burden on his shoulders. But it mattered not to Martok at the moment. He was in his element, leading a battle group and seeking out a battle with the Breen. Reports had filtered down the chains of command telling of hit and run attacks by small Breen ships on dozens of worlds federation and Klingon alike. The Breen were going out in more numbers now, and their ships were striking at different worlds across hundreds of light years of space. What left the Federation and the Klingons clueless was the strikes at worlds void of life. The knew not that those worlds had once been labeled under other designations.

P3X-8596. P2X-416. P3X-974. 3X-797. P3X-744. Five worlds that the Federation knew nothing of, but for which the coordinates were well known to the Lanteans. Argos. Bedrosia. Cimmeria. Land of Light. Tagrea. Worlds that had at one point pledged their support against the Ori. Worlds that were now devoid of life, having had their surfaces swept clean by the Breen ships. Worlds that had been technologically inferior to Earth when they had been discovered, yet apparently had still posed a threat to the Breen. How was it, though, that the Breen knew of them, and yet the Federation had not?

The Alliance fleet arrived at Cardassia Prime, in response to a distress call that was already more than a week old. It was the Lantean ships that recognized the workings of the Gadmeer beams on the planet below, but as many times as they asked, and as many times as they demanded to know the truth, none of the Cardassians would reveal the truth to the Alliance fleet.

Near the Breen Homeworld

_Talus_ could delay no longer. The longer they remained within this nebula, they more the odds increased of their accidental discovery by any one of the roving patrols the Breen had in their space. But before O'Neill could order the destruction of the Breen system, he launched a series of cloaked probes. These probes would scan any ship they encountered, sweep any planet they encountered, looking for archives they could download. O'Neill was still shocked at the information the Vorta had given them. The location of the Breen world had been a shock to O'Neill. He, more than most, knew the minds of those who had been known to history as SG-1. He was in his quarters, awaiting the results of the probes. But he already knew what he had to do.

"Ronon."

"Uncle Jack."

"How are things on the Ascended Plain?"

"Pretty boring until recently. A lot of us have our eyes on you."

"Why?"

"Daniel would have called it self-interest."

"I don't understand."

"You are in a position to fix one of our mistakes, from four centuries ago. We should have dealt with them then, but the IOA figured that as long as they didn't come after us, we could afford to magnanimous and ignore them. I'm pretty sure that was a mistake."

"You wouldn't happen to know why they don't reveal themselves, would you?"

"The archives the probes are grabbing will tell you exactly what I will, that an experiment centuries ago left their race horribly disfigured, and dependant on various filters for their eyes. The rest of the Breen mask is breathing apparatus. It makes them look menacing, don't you think?"

"Menacing ain't quite the word I'd use. Still, did you think they would take their hatred of Earth this far?"

"No. Then again, I never figured anyone would find a piece of an Ori ship either. We should have been more careful."

"Woulda, shoulda, coulda. Lots of things your generation could have done differently, Uncle Jack. Mind if I ask you something?"

"Go ahead kid."

"What did you think when you found out what Woolsey and the IOA had done?"

"I was angry. No. Angry doesn't begin to cover what I felt. Betrayal. Shock. Fury. Sadness. Disappointment. Those and a whole lot of other emotions that I can't put into words. But most of all, it was disappointment. Particularly in the so-called 'civilian leadership' that the IOA was supposed to be. They had taken the Stargate program away from our control, stating that the military tended to muck things up too much. We tended towards shoot first, and maybe ask questions if anyone was still alive to question. But, and this is just my opinion, I think the IOA and the TRUST were working hand in hand in those final days. I think the TRUST started the war, and the IOA abandoned ship. You know the emergency beam out plans that were in place back then? Same as they are now, right? Dependant on subcutaneous transponder chips?"

"Yeah?"

"It was the first mass use of the CRaM Arc Light system. That series of satellites pout into geosynchronous orbit such that a person with the right transponder chip could be transported anywhere on the face of the planet. Did you know that not only did the IOA members have those chips, but also the members of their families, down to their pets? I'm talking immediate family, in-laws, and out to second, third, and in some cases fifth cousins! But the military we rescued was only military and not their families, unless someone happened to have been touching a loved one at the time of the transport."

"Cram? Who came up with that name anyways?"

"Carter, Rush, and McKay. CRaM."

"Ok. Last question?"

"Shoot."

"Genocide. Should I?"

"Genocide is always a tough call. We did it with the Wraith, the Ori, and the Goa'uld. The Goa'uld did it to countless numbers of civilizations, just because they could. The Aschen tried to do that to Earth. Time to return the favor. As much as its something I'd rather not think about, it's something that is necessary from time to time. Think of it, like excising a cancer in a body."

"Excising a cancer? Who have you been talking to Uncle Jack?"

"Janet must be rubbing off on me."

"Who?"

"Never mind. I need to get back before I'm missed too much. The others…well, they don't see why those of us from the SGC would want to spend so much time with our descendants. We're proud of you, Ronon. We'll support you against the others, if needs be."

"Thanks, General. I do appreciate it."

**

* * *

**

Breen Space

**Nebula**

**T-5 minutes**

Everything was as ready as it could be. Ships were in position, waiting on the word to launch their mission. The plan called for a simultaneous exit into the Breen system from multiple points, with weapons blazing as they exited hyperspace. The cloaked probes in the system had sent back the locations of every but of artificial anything in the system, and these had been categorized and prioritized for the many different weapons systems available to the _Talus_ and her fleet. The men and women of the fleet had been told the true nature of the Breen, the nature they had learned of in school. What was foremost in the minds of all Pegasus residents, was the image of the handwritten note, and the blood spattered on it. This wasn't so much about the current crimes of the Breen, but about the past crimes of the Aschen. For that was who the Breen had been, once upon a time, before an accidental release of some biological warfare agent had scarred the entire population not only externally, but at the genetic level, forcing them to cover their faces from others who would judge them based on looks alone, and to provide filtration for water and air, two things their altered genetic sequences required in the most pure form possible.

O'Neill gave the order, and the ships began to move out of formation, to make the final jump to hyperspace, before emerging at their preplanned spots around the Breen system. First they would eliminate the homeworld, and then the other members of the Breen Confederation. Worlds like Volia. By the time SG-1 found the Volians, they were already well past the stage of rescue. The Aschen had encountered them first, and had given them all heir hopes and dreams, in the forms of medicines, of protection against the big bad universe, and in technology. The Aschen had cured all of their diseases, and had extended their lifespans, and at the same time, they had rendered the population almost sterile. A world that had been in the midst of an industrial age with a population of hundreds of millions, had been reduced to an agrarian society, with a population in the tens of thousands; a population with no memory of what their world, their very civilization had been like only a pair of centuries previously.

**Breen Space**

**Home of the Aschen Confederation**

**Zero Hour**

Hyperspace windows blossomed into existence all over the space controlled by the Breen. Alarms sounded throughout their facilities, and ships rose up to meet those who had dared to breach their lines. And before any of them could send out any form of transmission, a voice was heard in all of their ships, in all of their facilities, and all over their world.

"Aschen scum. In memory of Volia, of what you almost did to Earth centuries ago, we have come for you."

"You know who we were. How?"

"SG-1."

Two letters and a number. That's all it took for the Breen spokes-creature to realize that centuries of deception had disappeared in just a few seconds. As the realization came to its mind, a movement of its hand gave the command. Every Breen ship, those modified and those awaiting modification, opened fired on the unknown ships. The _Talus_ and her fleet opened fired on the Breen ships within seconds of the incoming fire. The result was an immediate loss of life on both sides.

Beam weapons and energy torpedoes struck true on shields, with some penetrations. Picard had opted to use his Saber as a fast strike platform. With Riker at the helm, the small ship moved like a fighter, dodging and weaving between the heavier ships, and firing her suite of weapons at targets of opportunity. The fire was so thick, however, that some of it was bound to get through. The Saber limped away to the edge of the battlefield, near where the carriers were situated and launching their fighters into battle. Picard's crew worked minor miracles, putting the ship back together in less than ten minutes, so they could enter the fight again.

Five of the newest Breen battleships came out of warp near their home world. They had been only minutes away when the call had gone out that the homeworld was under attack. These were the latest in a long line of battleships for the Breen, and the design dated back to the days of Aschen Confederation. The design may have been old, but the concept of building a ship around a large gun was not. As the early battleships had been built around massive particle cannons, so had these been built around the Ri weapon. Five Ri Cannons, operating in a sequence, allowing one cannon to be fired every five seconds, with each cannon receiving no less than twenty seconds between shots for each individual cannon. The rate of fire might not have been impressive, but the amount of power certainly was.

It was no where near what an Ori cannon might have put out, but it was sufficient to burn through shields in just one or two shots. With five ships equipped with the cannons, the _Talus_ and her fleet were doomed to a spectacular failure. With a quick coded signal, the bombers assigned to the fleet carriers performed a micro-jump through hyperspace bringing them within range of the Breen homeworld, where they released their ordinance, and jumped back to their carriers to re-arm with anti-ship weapons.

It was a move the Breen had not expected; no Alpha quadrant species had used fighters or bombers in centuries. Whatever the weapons were based on that had been dropped, the death tolls were beginning to mount quickly on the surface.

**

* * *

**

Sixteen hours Earlier

**Cardassia Prime**

The evidence clearly pointed to the use a some very advanced terraforming technology. Janeway muttered something about a 'Genesis Trace', while Carter muttered about the 'Gadmeer'. Both fleets were intensively scanning the planet below them, when Janeway found herself someplace else.

"Mon Admiral."

"Q. I might have known you would show up again."

"But of course!"

Janeway caught something out of the corner of her eye and looked down for a mere instant. The look on her face when she directed her angered gaze at Q was beyond description.

"Q? Would it be too much trouble to conjure up some clothes for me? Not that I don't like a silky almost transparent negligee, but I'd rather you not see me in it."

"You take all my fun away. Oh very well, if you insist."

He snapped his fingers, but rather than a Starfleet issue uniform, she was now wearing what someone from the twentieth century would recognize as a Bunny suit, from the infamous Playboy Club.

"Is this better, Kate?"

"No. But I do strangely feel more covered in this than the negligee. Why am I here, Q?"

"I have some information to pass along. When I send you back, no time will have passed. You need to contact your friend from Lantea. Tell him O'Neill is not in jail. And tell him also that the fleet must go to P4C-970."

"What planet is that?"

"Your friend from Lantea will know. But you must go now. Events are in motion Katie. And the outcome, is too fluid to determine."

"That doesn't sound like you, Q. For a second there, you almost sounded like you cared!"

"I do. Not as much as you think, and probably less that I should."

As Q disappeared, she found herself, thankfully, in full uniform, and on her Bridge, noting that exactly no time had passed between heartbeats.

"Communications, get me General Carter!"

"Sir! Channel open, Admiral!"

"Ah, Admiral. I was just about to call you. I was speaking with Chancellor Martok who has come up with a nice idea. He suggested we take this battle to the Breen first, and then mop up their minor operations afterwards. He was about to give me the location of the Breen Homeworld."

"I see. Then the information I have recently been handed may be of little to no use."

"Information?"

"Ronon O'Neill."

"He's in the brig on Lantea, awaiting a court martial."

"I'm told he's in the Alpha Quadrant."

"That's not possible."

"My informant has never been wrong."

"I see. And what else did your informant speak of?"

"He said we should go to the Breen homeworld and deal with them once and for all. P4C-970 is what he said."

"I see. Navigator, feed in that gate address."

"Sir!"

"Well, Navigator. I'm waiting."

"I've run the address several times sir. Wanting to make sure. The coordinates that the Chancellor gave us, and the Planetary Designation the Admiral gave us are one and the same."

"And?"

"It's an address that is locked out of the old SGC database as a 'Do Not Travel' to world."

"What world is it? I don't like the suspense factor here, Ensign."

"Right sir. It's the Aschen homeworld sir."

"I see. Admiral Janeway, this changes things a bit. Navigator, pass along those coordinates to all ships in the fleet. Maximum power to the drives."

"Wait! What about O'Neill?"

"I'll deal with O'Neill later. If he's really here. This takes precedent."

"Who are the Aschen?"

"Never you mind that, Admiral."

**

* * *

**

Breen System

**T+45 minutes**

There was something akin to organized chaos in the battle over the Breen homeworld, or what was left of it. The plasma based bio-genetic weapons had spread far and wide, dissolving everything in its path, like a strong acid, leaving a mush of flesh and bone behind. The Breen, realizing what was occurring, had turned all of their engines of war towards the invaders, while sending every available shuttle to the surface to rescue as many of their people as they could. Those same shuttles were flying between a moon in orbit over the Breen world, and the surface, each time bringing less and less survivors of the plasmatic plague that was sweeping their world. The moon base held their most precious artifact; their Stargate. They used it to dial up a fall-back world and began evacuating the survivors through to that world, while their fleet bought them the time necessary to accomplish this.

Breen ships lay shattered and lifeless, mixed in with fighters and bombers from the invasion group. _Cataphract_ and _Knight_, the two Knight class escort carriers, along with _Ballista_, one of the two Catapult class missile destroyers had pulled back away from the fighting, while crews worked minor miracles to seal the breaches in the hull that had caused so many of their crews to be forcefully ejected into the coldness of space. Picard's own Saber was also back with this group while his crew tried to patch damaged systems for yet another run at the enemy. The remaining fighters and bombers stood guard aggressively over the ships, daring any of the smaller Breen raiders to attack them.

_Onager_, the other Catapult class missile destroyer, was also with the group, but not for repairs. She had taken a hit amidships, and her shields had failed spectacularly, cutting deeply into the hull across the entire length of the ship. Crews from the Ballista were taking what the could salvage in short order from the _Onager_, to at the least make the Ballista ready to fight once more. But _Onager_ wouldn't, at least not without access to the yards in the Dark Clouds Sector. Her crew, what was left of it, had already been evacuated to _Sambuca_, the Siege class troop lander, as only the Siege class ships had the infirmary space to deal with so any wounded. Especially since _Talus_ was locked in combat closer in to the Breen World.

As ships traded shots at one another, the sensor operator on the _Talus_ called out a warning.

"Sir! Impending FTL event! Warp signatures detected!"

"Damn. They don't need any more reinforcements!"

But it wasn't reinforcements, at least not for either of the combatants. It was the Lantean and Federation Alliance fleet.

**

* * *

**

Bridge

**_Everett Young_**

"Sensors! Give me full sweeps of every ship! Identify everyone!"

"Sir! Sensors scans are pinging back with Satedan modes and codes for the unknown ships to the left of the screen. Federation and Klingon sensors identify the others as Breen vessels!"

"Satedan? What the Hell? Get me the Satedan ships on the comm, now!"

"Kind of busy here, Carter. What do you want?"

"O'Neill! You're supposed to be in the Brig on Lantea! What in Dante's Hell are you doing here?"

"I'm doing your job, Carter. The Breen homeworld is toast. Used the…"

"No. Tell me you didn't use that!"

"Too late, Carter."

"O'Neill! I order you to stand down!"

"In the middle of a battle here. Either help us defeat the Aschen or stay out of our way!"

"Weps! Target the Breen ships and fire with every weapon we have!"

The battle was one-sided, in favor of the ships from Pegasus, and their Federation and Klingon allies. Because of this new and overwhelming majority, it wasn't long before the Breen ships had been defeated. Two had managed to escape, but it wouldn't be long before the fleet could track them down and finish the job once and for all. During the battle, the _Talus_ had sent out a short but very intense message signal direct to the _Glacis_, which then relayed it to Sateda in Pegasus. Ships began to move in the Pegasus galaxy. Ships of the Coalition of Planets.

"O'Neill. You are ordered to stand down and prepare to be boarded. You will be placed under arrest and your crew…"

"Yes? What of my crew? Are you going to kill them too? No. I don't recognize your authority to arrest me or to board any of my ships."

"As a member of the Lantean military, I order you to…"

"No. Carter. I've resigned my commission with Lantea the moment I was taken into custody. Sateda activated my other commission the second that happened."

"Other commission?"

"The rank of Fleet General with the Satedan Military."

As he spoke, orders were passed along, given by O'Neill using the Satedan hand language that had been practiced for centuries by the Specialists of Sateda. Orders were passed to ships, and those that were able secured others ships that were not able, with gravity and tractor beams. Coordinates for the _Glacis_ and her group were keyed in, awaiting the final order.

"No, you're wrong, Carter. It won't end here. Be seeing you Carter."

A final hand motion, and the _Talus_ and her task force jumped into hyperspace, and dropping a wake canceller bomb behind them as they jumped, which would disrupt for some hours, the ability of the other Lantean ships to track their movements. On the _Sovereign_, Janeway was staring at something else on the screen as the fleet entered Hyperspace. Seeing her stares at the screen, her trusted aide, Captain Tuvok, looked at the section of the viewer in question. There. Just as the fleet jumps to hyperspace. A clear shot of a Saber class vessel. Complete with registry number. A quick query to the Starfleet archives reveals something he didn't expect.

"Admiral. The Saber class ship on the screen."

"Yes?"

"It's registered to Jean-Luc Picard."

"Captain Picard?"

"Former Captain. Starfleet Command lists him as retired as of his return to Earth from Pegasus."

"What was he doing with O'Neill?"

"It would appear that he has allied himself with an enemy of the Lantean Alliance. And because of our alliance with them, that would mean that Picard is to be considered an enemy of the Federation."

"Forward the contact report to Starfleet Command. Let them make that determination, Tuvok."

"Of course, Admiral."

**

* * *

**

Midway Station

There was a massive fleet at Midway. Upon receipt of a particular signal, it turned and jumped for the Alpha quadrant. The first stop would be Qo'noS. The cat was out of the bag, so to speak, and the fleet had orders to secure the Klingon home system under the pretense that the _Talus_ would soon arrive there. But _Talus_ was headed elsewhere. _Glacis_ jumped out of hyperspace near Midway, and sent the appropriate coded signal. The very small crew aboard Midway, less than fifty, were all members of a Satedan unit, that had used every bribe and favor they had to obtain this particular posting.

A few hours later, _Talus_ and her fleet jumped in and the crews looked on in amazement. Ships were trailing plasma and ion particles as their containment systems had been breached. Some were trailing more than that, but they were already crewless hulks. Midway deployed their massive docking cradles and the ships bellied up to the bar to receive their share of treatment to their hulls. Midway would fix the exteriors, but it was up to their own crews to fix the interiors. Lantea might have thought only their Gate could dial Midway, but Sateda knew otherwise. As soon as the call went through from Midway to Sateda for extra engineers and shipyard workers, Sateda answered the call. Within a span of two hours, there were more than enough personnel available to speed up the repairs to the damaged task force.

* * *

*_Flashback_*

"Mr. Worf. Come in please."

"Captain."

"Prune juice?"

"Yes, thank you."

"You're wondering why I asked for this meeting?"

"You are no longer with Starfleet. I checked."

"I'm raising my own fleet, Worf. I'd like to think I could count on your help."

"Why?"

"What do you think of this alliance with the Lanteans?"

"It strikes me as one of convenience."

"But more convenient for whom? The Federation or the Lanteans?"

"The Lanteans. But I'm not sure why."

"They want to annex our galaxy to their empire. By force if necessary. Knowing that, and knowing the strengths of the various powers here, who will they go after first?"

"The Romulans are out of the picture. That leaves the Federation, the Klingons, and the Dominion."

"You missed one, but do go on."

"I think, that they would strike at the closest targets first, either Earth or Qo'noS."

"And then the Dominion, yes?"

"If they win at the first two, then yes."

"It's my understanding that they've placed space denial mines around Earth and Qo'noS?"

"Yes?"

"You do realize those can work in other ways. They can deny the space to the Federation or the Klingons, effectively blockading our home worlds."

"There is that to consider. You realize Captain, that if they do this, the Klingons will swear a blood oath for their destruction?"

"I do. But you've seen their weapons. Do you think the Klingons would stand against them, knowing it meant their demise as a civilization?"

"It would be a matter of honor."

*_End Flashback_*

* * *

**Qo'noS**

There was a Lantean fleet at Qo'noS. It had been reinforced by elements of the fleet waiting at Midway, while the remaining ships had gone on to Earth. The remnants of the Breen were being chased down by a few Lantean Auroras. The Auroras also had the task of visiting the worlds known to be Aschen in nature and do to them, what had been done to P4C-970. Complete eradication of all life forms on the surface. That was the device that had Carter so scared and so reluctant to use. It dissolved flesh on contact. It ate protein sequences for breakfast, silicon for lunch, and any other organic or inorganic matter for supper. By the time the plague agent was done, the world left behind would an inert hunk of rock, floating through space, with absolutely nothing resembling life, all the way down to the single cell arena. Genocide. The systematic eradication of all life on a particular world. And it was earmarked for the other Aschen worlds.

Carter had gotten word from Lantea. The schedule was being pushed up on account of what the Satedans were doing. Carter needed to finish laying the blockade mines here in Klingon space. Word was passed quickly and quietly among the Lantean ships and just as quickly targeting data began flowing out from the Wraith-derived sensors on all of the Federation and Klingon ships.

"Weps, shields to full. Paint every target we can. Pass the word along to all Lantean ships."

"Sir?"

"It's time, Weps. Lantea has ordered us to annex this galaxy and bring it under our sphere of control."

"About time, sir."

**USS Sovereign**

"Admiral! We are being targeted!"

"By whom?"

"The Lantean ships! Reports coming in from every ship in the fleet. All Federation and Klingon vessels are being actively targeted!"

"Get me General Carter. Now."

"Problem Admiral?"

"Why are you targeting my ships?"

"I have my orders, Admiral. This galaxy will be brought under our control. Fight me. Or die. Or surrender. Your choice."

"What?"

"Comms. Close channel. Weps. Pass the word. Alpha strike."

"Aye sir."

"Weps. The word is given."

"Admiral! Reading massive buildup of energy on all Lantean ships!"

"Shields! Pass the word to all ships, that Lantean ships are to be considered hostile!"

But it was too late. The Lantean ships opened fire on the Federation ships and scored direct hits. Some were quick to bring up their shields, some not so quick. The strikes were targeted for the most damage possible. The _Sovereign_ and _Enterprise_, being two of the latest generation of ships, took the least amount of damage, but the Intrepids and the Akiras weren't so lucky. Beams of intense energy, weapons derived from the Asgard, the Ori, and even the Ancients themselves, struck true on ships like Bellerophon and Scylla cleaving the nacelles off their pylons like a warm knife through butter. Ships like the _Rabin_ and _Spector_ weren't so lucky as to only lose their warp nacelles. The beams from nearby Lanteans hips moved like scythes through wheat, carving a line across these two ships, slicing the warp nacelles in two, and triggering secondary explosions that obliterated both ships.

The two sovereign class ships turned and fired with everything in their arsenals, but it was like shooting spitballs at a brick wall. The interceptor fire from the Lantean ships swatted the incoming fire and torpedoes out of the sky. The only luck the Federation fleet had was with the transphasic torpedoes, but so few of the ships carried them to begin with that it was very much a one sided fight. In a matter of less than five minutes, all eight K'tin'ga class ships and all twelve B'rel class ships had been swatted out of space; their crews and their hulls just so much expanding clouds of gas. In the midst of battle, Worf was able to send a single word message to a point in space.

Space twisted with the appearance of hyperspace windows as the Coalition fleet emerged. _Talus_ and her task force, were fresh from the repair yards at Midway and had already been bloodied. _Glacis_ and her task force had yet to engage in battle, and so they took the lead in the Qo'noS system against the Lantean ships, trading shot for shot, and targeting the flag ship, the _Everett Young_, with weapons designed to drain power from the ship. A surgical strike by the _Hospitaller_, one of the Crusader heavy frigates, damaged the engines enough so that the Destiny class ship was now adrift. The _Sambuca_ moved in and began beaming over troops to take control of the ship. General Carter gave the order to abandon his ship, and he and his crew felt the tell tale tingle of an transporter beam take hold and then he was aboard another ship and rushing for the bridge. Upon his arrival, he gave the order to withdraw, and what remained of his fleet jumped to hyperspace.

_Sambuca_ and _Petrary_ moved in, beaming over troops to pacify the Lantean ships that had been left behind, and the combined Coalition fleet now formed up around these left behind ships and faced off against the Federation and Klingon ships. With a brief command, a channel was opened, for a multi-way conference. Admiral Janeway and Chancellor Martok did not look at all pleased. Picard had a smirk on his face, and Worf had an all-knowing smug smile on his face.

"Will someone please tell me what the Hell is going on here?"

"With pleasure, Kathryn."

"What are you doing, Jean-Luc, with him?"

"General O'Neill may not be the type of man that would rise to the Captain's Chair in our Federation, but he is an honorable man. A lot more than can be said for General Carter, who upon believing the situation was ripe, turned on you."

"Why should I believe you?"

"So far, O'Neill has told me the truth. Has Q done the same?"

"What have the Q got to do with this?"

"Maybe you should ask Q that? Ask him what they used to be called when they were a member of the Great Alliance?"

"Don't listen to him, Kathy. His mind has been clouded by tricks and tricksters!"

"Furling. You have broken your vow, made aeons ago to the Ancients."

"Pitiful human. You think you can impose that ancient nonsense on the Q?"

"Tell me, Furling. Do you know what the Sangraal is?"

"That nice gem that Myrrdin created?"

"A gem with the power to kill ascended beings like yourself, Furling. The last time we used it, it wiped out the Ori. We've refined it since then, and can target a specific higher being. Care to call our bluff?"

"Well played, Ronon O'Neill. Well played. But I know you wouldn't use it or risk having your own ascended beings call you out on this."

"As I said, it's been refined. With their help."

"You risk war with the Q, human. Don't push your luck."

"No, Furling. You shouldn't push your luck. Stay out of this, or you'll regret your interference."

"Is that a threat, human?"

"It's a promise."

As Q started to make a promise of his own, he noticed, for the first time, the glowing beings standing, or rather floating, behind O'Neill. At least a dozen of the Ascended. A tactical retreat was called for. Q would need the help of the Continuum in order to put these Lantean Humans in their rightful place. With a snap of his fingers he was gone.

"Kathryn, do the right thing."

"And what is the right thing, Picard?"

"Defend Earth, but don't choose a side. It's civil war in the Pegasus galaxy, and if we pick a side, it will mean a lot of needless death."

"The Lanteans broke their word. It's going to be up to the Federation Council to decide our course of action."

"Then you're a fool, Janeway. Earth will burn."

"I don't think the Lanteans will do that."

Communications ended, and Ronon turned to Picard.

"You've been a big help, Picard, but this is where we part ways. If you stay with this ship, you may inadvertently declare the Federation to be on my side, and the Lanteans will see that as an excuse to scorch the Earth."

"And that is not something I want. Is there no other recourse for you but civil war?"

"This has been coming for a long time, Captain. The modifications have been made as you requested them, Captain. May your new ship serve you well. Know that if none of your crew are left alive, the ship will self-destruct rather than fall into the hands of those who would misuse the technology on her."

"Godspeed, General O'Neill."

"We'll meet again Captain. It may just be on another plane."

_Talus_ and her group jumped away, towing five Lantean ships into hyperspace. Picard found himself back about his ship, along with the Cardassian volunteers and the Vorta and his Jem'Hadar escorts. There was no love lost between the Federation and the Dominion, but in this particular case they had worked well together. Picard turned to his helmsman and ordered a course for Dominion Space at maximum warp. The little ship jumped to high warp, and when they were out of sensor range of the other Federation and Klingon ships, Riker opened a hyperspace window and the little ship shot into it like a cannonball.

Picard picked up a pad and began to look over all of the changes the Satedan engineers had made to his small ship. They had left everything that was Federation technology in place, and had installed their own systems along side those already on the ship. The main deflector dish had been altered to not only generate the entry for hyperspace, but also to fire what was listed on the pad as an Ancient Main Cannon. Alongside the phaser strips, the Satedan engineers had installed Asgard Disintegration beams. There were several dozen twin barreled turrets in hidden behind irised hatchways that would pop-up on command. These were small magnetically accelerated cannons that fired a projectile. Normally projectiles wouldn't do any damage, but the as the explosive tipped round left the barrel, it passed through a phase shifter screen that moved the projectile slightly out of phase. A small sensor on the fore end of the projectile detected when it was near a hull and phased it back in allowing the tip to explode. It wasn't a transphasic torpedo, but it would do some damage and the damage would accumulate over time. The other changes had been to the power systems. Naquadah generators for the most part, and crystal based computing systems that while not as powerful as Federation technology, could definitely store more information.

At Midway, the Coalition battle group jumped out of hyperspace with their war prizes in tow. Engineers and repair teams immediately went to work and with crews sent from the Coalition worlds, the five Lantean ships joined the Coalition fleet. They had been the Invincible, Victory, Everett Young, Bataan, and Hellcat. The names would remain the same, but their flag colors would change. The crews aboard them had been captured for the most part, and were sent via the Stargate to a world the Coalition had prepared for eventual prisoners of war.

On Coalition charts, the world was called Max; as in SuperMax. There was a Stargate on the planet, but it was in an enclosed facility. As residents came out of the Gate, transporter systems would snatch them up and deposit them outside the building. The transporters were a one-way trip only, and there was no control device with the Gate. Permanent structures had been put into place on the planet, all made of concrete. Even the bunk-type beds were made of concrete. In the mess halls, the tables an benches were concrete. And the plates on the tables were concrete. Only the glasses that materialized at each meal were plastic.

There was a plinth at each central plaza that contained the rules carved in stone. Prisoners were responsible only for farming their own food. This meant the fields that surrounded the prison complex, and the lake with fish. Prisoners were required to fill the food coffers on a daily basis, or they wouldn't eat. It was that simple. The planet was neither overly cold nor overly warm. It was a temperate world, and their location on the planet never rose above or fell below seventy-five degrees. There were no human guards on the planet. Only machines that created the food from the supplies in the coffers, or machines that treated the ill prisoners, or machines that maintained the other machines, all of which were located below ground, in an inaccessible complex.

As POWs arrived at the Gate Building, they were transported to the central plaza. Targeting sensors in the transporters made sure that no two prisoners were beamed to the same location. One facility on this continent was for men, with another facility on another continent for women. Enlisted and officers stayed together, separated only by sex. The Civil War, for them, was already over.

The five former Lantean ships were put into an auxiliary position within the battle fleet, and would act as their own squadron within the fleet. But before they could do much more than assign positions within the fleet, word came of an attack on Earth, by the Lantean forces. O'Neill ordered the jump to hyperspace.

**

* * *

**

Sol System

**Earth**

The Federation home fleet was in the fight of its life. The blockade mines that the Lanteans had given to Earth for protection had already been turned against them as the waves of Peregrine fighters and various shuttles that tried to leave Earth were shot down before they could enter the battle. For the second time in less than a year, the 'Double Alert' signal was sent across the Federation, but it would be for naught. The Lanteans had the upper hand here, and they quickly established their superiority in space. The Federation had not had a chance to repair Starbase One, and the firepower that it would have delivered was sorely missed in the battle. Of the six Alamo class troop transports that had initially been assigned to General Carter, five were left. And these five came down, with guns blazing to pacify Earth. With ten thousand troops per ship, the civilian population of Earth stood no chance. By the time the Coalition fleet arrived in the sector, Earth was under the control of the Lantean Alliance. The Coalition fleet fired one massive Alpha Strike at the Lantean ships, and then jumped back into Hyperspace.

A Lantean ship came down at the south pole, near the outpost of the Ancients. The weapons there had long ago been expended, and the ZPM that powered the facility had been removed. But the Lanteans were bringing ZPMs back to the facility, along with Drone weapons, and various other bits of equipment.

Antarctica would become home to the Lantean mission for the oversight of Earth. Not that any of the other continents weren't nice, but this one was easier to secure, considering there were so few other humans already there.

With four centuries to make improvements to their infantry forces, the Federation Marines never stood a chance against the black suited, shield wearing infantry of the Lantean Alliance. With Infantry carriers launching the old Goa'uld style shock grenades, and bombers flying over head streaming stun gas behind them, the free, but unarmed citizenry of Earth's cities fell easily to the ground, allowing the Lantean infantry to march up the main streets to the various government buildings in the main cities and lay claim to those cities. When the citizens awoke, it was to a new government in place and a choice for their futures. Accept the new order of things or not. If they chose to accept the new order, they would be required to undergo re-education in one of many centers the Lanteans were setting up. If they chose not to accept the new way of things, then they would be shipped to the Stargate facility in Colorado, where they would be given a basic pack of goods, and shipped to an almost barren world, deep in the Sculptor galaxy. Not that the destination would be known beforehand. This allowed the Lantean Alliance to begin bringing in its own colony ships with its cloned citizens ready for occupation of an empty world. Or a somewhat empty world.

Qo'noS

The Coalition fleet dropped out of hyperspace near the Klingon homeworld to find a large fleet of ships; mostly Federation, but a number of Klingon as well. The Klingons and the Federation had worked together to track down the last of the Breen ships. The Lantean Alliance, sadly, had already visited all of the former holdings of the Aschen Confederation and dealt them a final blow. When the last Breen ship was destroyed by the Federation Defiant class ship following it, the universe put paid to the crimes of the Breen. They had been exterminated.

Targeting sensors were painting every ship in the Coalition fleet, but no one fired. They knew all to well the strengths of the ships from Pegasus. Janeway opened a channel.

"Come here to gloat, O'Neill?"

"No. I'm sure you've heard the news already. Earth has fallen to the Lanteans. Information from our agents within the Lantean fleet tells us they are shipping any resistors off to another world, with only a basic pack of supplies. If they know what to do with those supplies, then they'll be ok. If not, well, they'll die."

"Where are they being sent?"

"We don't know which planet, but we know it's in Sculptor."

"Sculptor. As in the galaxy by that name?"

"Afraid so."

"Fifteen million light years from here?"

"About that. Yes."

"Then there's no hope of our retrieving them."

"For you, no. We could, theoretically, do something about that for you. Do you want the help?"

"What do we need to do?"

"We could, possibly, make modifications to one ship. Once we know the planet your people are being sent to, we could modify the ship with an external hyperspace window generator. Once the ship enters hyperspace, it would remain there until it reached its destination. We'd have to increase the structural integrity by a few orders of magnitude, but it is possible, in theory. It would be a one way trip, Admiral. So, choose a ship, but choose wisely. Odds are, whatever ship you send would be cutoff from reinforcements, possibly forever."

"Just the hyperspace generator?"

"No. There would be other modifications needed. Tell me the ship, and I'll give you a proposal."

"Just like that?"

"Exactly like that."

"I'll get back to you on that."

"Good. Now, if you could please stop targeting my ships, I'd appreciate it. We're going to do some emergency repairs, and then go after Carter and his fleet. Not a lot I can do about Earth for the moment."

"Even if we joined you, our ships can't stand up against your firepower."

"I know that, and so does Lantea. The Coalition will do what it can to remove the Alliance from your galaxy, but this is a civil war, Admiral, and the front here is a minor one. The major action is going on in Pegasus, where the main Coalition fleet is fighting the main Lantean fleet. All this, is merely a sideshow to the main event."

**Eight hours later**

The few repairs that had been necessary had been completed and the Coalition fleet was ready to hunt again.

"Sir. This just came for you. Eyes only."

"Give it here."

The aide who gave O'Neill the message would swear for the rest of his life, that the message he had delivered had been the only time he'd ever seen the General cry.

"Comms. Get me fleet wide. In the clear, and all frequencies, please."

"Sir? Yes sir."

"Attention. Your attention please. This is O'Neill. I've just received word from Coalition headquarters on Sateda. The Coalition's 3rd Fleet, forty-three ships and twenty-eight thousand personnel, has been lost with all hands. The Lanteans deployed a new weapon of some sort. Coalition Intelligence had no warning. The first scouts to jump in to the staging system found nothing but debris. All ships in that fleet were destroyed. That's all the information I have at this time."

"The entire task force, sir?"

"That's correct XO."

"Didn't your sister have a ship assigned to that group?"

"She and her husband both. They left four kids behind on Sateda."

"Damn. And they don't know what weapon was used?"

"No. Not a clue."

"Highborn bastards."

"XO, tell _Glacis_ to detach herself and five more ships of her choice for hit and run duties. I want to keep Carter guessing as much as possible."

"Right away sir."

"Sir, message incoming from Admiral Janeway."

"Route it to my station."

"O'Neill. I'm sending you the specifications for the _Venture_, a Galaxy glass Explorer."

"Two questions, and then I'll put my engineers to work. How many crew?"

"_Venture_ has one thousand and fourteen officers and crew, but can carry up to fifteen thousand in an evacuation mode."

"I see. How many shuttles?"

"There are three bays, one primary and two auxiliary. Primary bay, depending on the shuttle type can hold anywhere from five to twenty shuttles. The auxiliary bays are used primarily for large cargo transfers."

"Alright. I've got the specs here. Give me a few hours, and then I'll brief you on the changes."

"Thank you."

_Glacis_ took the lead of five additional ships, three missile ships and two heavy frigates, and jumped to hyperspace for their first hit and run mission near Earth space. They wanted to hit Carter near to his home base of operations, but well enough outside of range of the Lantean outpost that the Alliance had activated on Earth. Ancient derived shield technology or not, those Drones would mean a bad day for any ship they went up against. The tactic would be to fire an Alpha Strike of missiles and energy torpedoes before jumping back to hyperspace to find another target.

Twelve hours later, O'Neill asked for permission to come aboard the _Sovereign_, Janeway's flag ship. He beamed aboard, and after a short walk through various corridors, he was led to the Admiral's office.

"General O'Neill. Welcome aboard."

"Thank you Admiral. I have those plans for you. My engineers assure me that all of this can be done quickly at our dock at Midway, or not so quickly here with your fleet. If you'd like to have an engineer or two present while I make this presentation, by all means, do so."

"Yes, I think I would like an engineer here."

A few minutes later, they were joined by an engineer that Janeway introduced as Commander Torres-Paris. O'Neill put a small object down on Janeway's desk and pressed a remote trigger on his finger. The object was a holographic projector, and like slideshows of old, it was controlled by a wireless remote worn on the finger like a ring. But unlike the slideshows of old, this one was in three dimensions and could be zoomed in or out to show an overall picture, or a single bolt.

"Ladies, I give you our refit of the _Venture_. My engineers have been over this ship with a fine toothed comb, and have made their recommendations to me. All of the systems aboard the ship will be left intact. Perhaps you could tell me how closely related the Nebula class is related to the Galaxy class? My engineers found a large number of similarities."

"Nebula class vessels are very similar. Most of the components are identical."

"You were about to say, 'but'?"

"Yes. But, the Nebula class ships don't separate."

"Yes. Frankly my engineering team was surprised at that piece of information. It wasn't something we expected, but it works to our advantage."

"How?"

"It's my understanding, and feel free to correct me, but it's my understanding that Deck twenty-five consists entirely of crew quarters?"

"That is essentially correct. There are a few small storage areas, and a few small conference rooms, but yes, you are correct."

"Good. My engineers want to do away with all of the facilities on Deck Twenty-five and use the space for what we need."

"Doing away with that many residential units defeats the purpose for what you intend for this ship, doesn't it?"

"No. The distance to the edge of Sculptor from here is roughly fifteen million light years. At flank speed, one of our ships can cross that distance in fifteen days. The problem would be that the ship would burn through a fully charged ZPM in that short a period. At full speed, the crossing could be made in thirty days, and the ZPM would be half depleted upon arrival."

"Meaning the ship could return if necessary."

"Yes and no. Yes the ship could return, but it wouldn't be able to repeat the journey without someway of re-charging the ZPM. Presently, the only charging station exists in Pegasus, and the process is excruciatingly slow. That said, I could be convinced to provide you with an extra ZPM, for a small fee to be discussed later."

"I'm sure we'll discuss that later. For the moment though, please continue."

"The majority of the equipment on that particular deck will be our own power generation equipment, for the hyperspace drives. The Hyperspace window generator will be mounted in what is essentially a third nacelle, though only about a fourth as long as one of the existing nacelles. Mounted above this hull portion here approximately midway between the two existing nacelles. Putting it there does two things for us. It allows the ship to create an opening into Hyperspace, and it allows for the placement of additional structural integrity field generators to strengthen the overall hull. The stresses encountered at full or flank speed in Hyperspace are such that without these additional field generators, the _Venture_ would tear itself apart just trying to get to one-quarter speed."

"Alright. That explains the additional nacelle. Do you really need all that deck space for the power generators?"

"Good catch, Commander, and the answer is no, we don't. I believe during the First Contact situation we discovered a little something about each other's computational capabilities, yes? That is, Federation computers are a quantum leap ahead of our own, but our own storage media are a quantum leap ahead of yours. The banks of crystals we use hold several orders of magnitude more information than that which is possible on a vessel such as the _Venture_. A lot of the deck space will be used for crystal memory bank storage.

Centuries ago, we had an enemy called the Wraith. I won't go into details about their particular habits, but suffice to say that they used small ships called Darts, which were small one-creature fighter craft. One Dart could sweep over a planet, and bring back tens of hundreds of humans for the harvest. They used a crystalline storage medium. Their teleportation technology was less advanced than our own at the time, but they were able to store entire patterns in the crystals, until they needed to reconstitute them. The crystals, once powered, could hold the information intact, for long periods of time. Our own experiments with the technology showed zero percentage degradation over a five year storage period. Do you see where I'm going with this?"

"Not quite."

"Using the Wraith transporters, we can scan the cargo contents of a dozen colony transports and store them on that media. We could scan the population of the fleet, and store it on that media. The question is, would you rather take cargo or personnel?"

"Cargo suitable for establishing a colony. The personnel are already there, according to your intelligence reports."

"True. Now, referring back to the ability to separate into two separate ships. The saucer section is normally attached to the star drive section. The star drive section will have the hyperspace window generator attached, so if the ship traveled at flank speed to the target location, it would have to remain there, unless there was a second ZPM available. As I stated earlier, I am willing to provide that second unit, possibly even a third unit, but I would require something else in return. First though, let me show you what you can do with the possibilities of additional trips."

"Alright. Show us what you have in mind, and I'll tell you if we're interested."

"Fair enough. So, we're going to modify the _Venture_. She will carry enough supplies to essentially make the colony world self-sufficient. But the _Venture_ will be a single ship in a far flung galaxy, cut off from all support. So, she arrives at her destination, beams down all the cargo stored in the crystal memory bays. Maybe the ship sticks around for a few weeks, making sure things are proceeding on schedule. Ship separates. Star drive section returns home at full speed. It would take thirty days, and the ZPM would be half-full. Still enough power for a return to the new colony. A second cargo run as it were. Since the it would take less crew to man the star drive section, a lot of crew space could be converted to cargo space. Furthermore, we would agree to build a custom saucer section, for the return trip. It would attach like a standard saucer portion of a Galaxy class vessel. Aside from that and the cosmetic similarities, the custom saucer could be detached at destination to serve as a permanent space dock facility. We could fill the saucer with hangar bays, weapons ports, fighter craft, support craft, cargo haulers, shuttles, or whatever small support craft you would want.

At this point, the second ZPM would be depleted, and the _Venture_ would be permanently stranded, cut off from your Federation with the only support base being the planet. I can tell you a few things about Sculptor. One of the Destiny class ships the Lantean Alliance has in the fleet went through there a few centuries ago, and seeded the galaxy with Stargates and a number of probes. I can give you a list of planets, and their designations, that would have resources available to you. The information, at most, would be a decade out of date. With no interests in the Sculptor Galaxy, Sateda also has no interest in data from there. I can put in an official request for more recent intel, but that might give away our intentions to Lantea, and they might take actions against your people. But I can also request that Sateda set up a direct link with your colony via the Stargate Network, and your colony would no longer be cut-off. If you or someone you designate would be willing, we can effect a transfer to Sateda, and then your representative could travel to the new colony and then act as the official point of contact with the Coalition of Planets. At the very least, we would be able to offer humanitarian support."

"I'll find someone to fill that task, and even decade old information is better than none. Very well. When can you start the modifications?"

"I'll task a ship to tow the _Venture_ to Midway. We'll get all of the modifications done, while you line up the cargo you want taken. We'll fill the memory cores for you, and then fill the cargo holds. You'll get twice the amount of cargo in the same space."

"Good."

"Thank you Admiral. I know it's not easy having lost your primary support base, but I will try to help you where I can. This situation is not your fault. If anything, it's my fault. Sateda and the Coalition should have acted sooner to remove Lantea from the equation, and then you wouldn't have been faced with this situation at all."

"That's utter nonsense and you know it, General."

"Maybe it is. But I believe we're both the victims of higher powers manipulating us for their own ends, though our own higher powers tend to be more benevolent, considering they can't interfere."

The End

Just Kidding.

To be Continue...give or take a few weeks.


End file.
